ENGLISH LITERATURE 



IN 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



BY 



THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY 







NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1883 






,l4V 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

All rights reserved. 



TO 

JOHN^ FISKE 

WHOSE FEIENDSHIP AND EXAMPLE HAVE CONTINUALLY ENCOURAGED ME 

I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



PREFACE. 



This volume contains the substance of a course of 
lectures delivered in Cambridge, and repeated in part 
in Philadelphia, during the winter of 1881-82. This 
statement will, it is hoped, incline the reader to over- 
look the direct appeals to his memory and attention, 
which may be permissible to one reading aloud to a 
friendly audience, although less pardonable in the for- 
mality of print. 

In preparing this book for the press I have endeavor- 
ed to make the references to the works of other writers 
as full and as exact as possible, but I would once more 
explicitly acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. J. A. 
Symonds, whose volumes on Italian literature have been 
of constant service ; to Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose " His- 
tory of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century " 
is a thorough exposition of many subjects barely men- 
tioned by me ; to Mr. Karl Hillebrand's profound " Ger- 
man Thought," and to Mr. Alexandre Beljame's " Le 
Public et les Hommes de Lettres." This last-mentioned 
book I have made use of continually, especially in the 
pages on the periodicals that preceded the Tatler, on 
Pope, and on Addison. Mr. Beljame's thoroughness 
and precision make his volume of inestimable value to 



vi Preface, 

the student of the first half of the last century, and I 
am the more desirous of insisting in this place upon my 
obligations to him because his suggestiveness is so mani- 
fold that continual reference to his pages would have 
been monotonous. The literary histories of Hettner, 
Biedermann, Julian Schmidt, and Koberstein have been 
frequently consulted, and seldom in vain. 

It will be noticed that this book is by no means a 
complete history of the literature of the last century : 
many important authoi's, like Prior and Smollett, have 
but a word given them ; Fielding receives no full discus- 
sion ; and many other writers are not even mentioned. 
My aim, however, has been rather to supplement the 
histories by pointing out, so far as I could, the more 
evident laws that govern literature. I have accordingly 
tried to show the principles that went to the formation 
of the literature of the last century, and also the causes 
of its overthrow. Many will doubtless be unwilling to 
subscribe to the belief that letters are controlled by laws. 
Mrs. Oliphant, a writer who deserves and receives the 
respect of all her many readers, affirms, in her admira- 
ble "Literary History of England in the End of the 
Eighteenth and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury " (i. 7 and 8), that " every singer is a new miracle — 
created if nothing else is created — no growth developed 
out of precedent poets, but something sprung from an 
impulse which is not reducible to law." If this state- 
ment is correct, literature forms a singular exception to 
what has seemed a universal rule. When we consider 
Mrs. Oliphant's delightful novels we find them occupy- 
ing a normal position in the development of fiction, 
with their exact drawing of life and avoidance of direct 



Preface. vii 

moral teaching. Mrs. Oliphant acknowledges the exist- 
ence in society of " a slow progression, which, however 
faint, however deferred, yet gradually goes on, leaving 
one generation always a trifle better than that which 
preceded it, with some scrap of new possession, some 
right assured, some small inheritance gained. From 
age to age the advance may be small, yet it is appreci- 
able. . . . J^ew modifications and conditions arise, the 
public sense is awakened, or it is cultivated, or at all 
events it is changed. . . . The reforms from which we 
hoped most, the advances for which we struggled most 
strenuously, do not produce all the good we expected ; 
but we cannot, nor would we, undo them. In every- 
thing there is a current onward, perhaps downward, but 
never back. . . . The principle indeed changes from 
time to time. It comes to a climax. . . . All is not ab- 
solute good or advantage to the human race ; but yet 
the race is stepping onward, it discovers new powers, it 
learns new ameliorations, and if it also makes proof of 
novel sufferings and dangers, it finds new defences and 
medicines for them. ... It is in fact a real progress 
through a thousand drawbacks, and every age leaves 
some foundation upon which the next can build." This 
lucid description of the gradual progress of society might, 
it seems to me, apply perfectly to literature, but this, 
and its application to art, Mrs. Oliphant denies, because 
we have not advanced upon Shakspere, Bacon, Chaucer, 
and Fra Angelico. This is, in brief, her reason for 
limiting the extent to which law may be afiirmed to 
exist. According to her, and to a very current opinion 
which she represents, literature and art are outside of 
law. 



viii Preface. 

Yet if we are unwilling to regard art and literature 
as miraculous, may we not be justified in supposing that 
there is some confusion in thus limiting the rules that 
govern the human mind in its other relations? Does it 
follow from the proposition that literature is governed 
by law that there should be a regular gradation of gen- 
ius ? that Dryden's plays should be superior to Shak- 
spere's, and Dean Milman's to both ? If these expecta- 
tions are disappointed, is the law of progress at fault? 
I think not. Those who agree with Mrs. Oliphant in 
finding progress in political history certainly cannot 
find, let us say, in the arguments uttered a few years 
affo in Cono^ress in favor of what was called the Force 
Law, an advance upon the position that was taken in 
Parliament, nearly two and a half centuries ago, against 
Charles I. ; yet no one will deny the general advance 
in ]3ersonal freedom throughout the civilized world 
since that day, and that in this country liberty is 
not a mere oratorical catch- word. The great literary 
glory of the reign of Elizabeth was but one expres- 
sion of the same fervor that inspired Drake and Ra- 
leigh ; and in our own time, when literature appears 
to languish, Mrs. Oliphant's own novels are express- 
ing the same wider interest in the people that in poli- 
tics makes itself felt as the spread of democracy. 
The construction of an arrears - of - rent bill is less 
dramatic than was the attempt to arrest the five mem- 
bers of the House of Commons, just as Marlowe's '' Dr. 
Faustus " is more thrilling than any novel of the realists, 
but one is as much governed by law as the other, is 
equally the result of antecedent causes. To ask noth- 
ing but heroics of literature would be like demanding 



Preface. ix 

nothing but the expression of devotion in painting. 
May we not hope that the present interest in reality 
and distrust of literary conventions may in time help 
the production of masterpieces ? George Eliot's novels, 
for example, sliow us how far the province of literature 
has been enlarged, how great has been the addition to 
the material of writers, if the phrase may be allowed, 
within a century. There is no need of fearing that 
heroism is extinct, and it is not impossible that litera- 
ture may yet flash into a brilliancy for which long years 
spent in studying real life shall have prepared writers 
and readers. At any rate, a genius, in the future as in 
the past and the present, is bound by the necessity of 
building on the' foundations that society is laying every 
day. Every apparently insignificant action of ours con- 
tributes its mite to the sum of circumstances which in- 
spire the writer, whose vision may be dim or inaccurate, 
but who can see only what exists or may exist, and is 
limited by experience whether this be treated literally 
or be modified by the imagination. No writer can es- 
cape this limitation any more than he can imagine a 
sixth sense. If these statements are accurate, and a 
general, although not uniform, progress is acknowledged 
to exist in society, literature may also be said to be 
under the sway of law, or, rather, to move in accordance 
with law. We shall not expect every later writer to be 
greater than Shakspere, any more than we shall expect 
a greater enthusiasm for high truths in the birthplace 
of Daisy Miller than in the Athens of Pericles, Yet it 
may well be that, although the vivid genius is absent, 
there is a general widening of human interest and sym- 
pathies, which will be more apparent when it is crystal- 



X Preface. 

lized by some great writer than it is now, when, as Cot- 
tle sang of climbing Malvern Hills, 

" It needs the evidence of close deduction 
To know that ever I shall reach the top." 

Before closing, I wish to express mj^ gratitude to the 
trustees and the officials of the Boston Public Library 
for their unfailing kindness. 

My hearty thanks are also due to my friend, Mr. 
George Pellew, for many valuable suggestions and for 
much assistance in correcting proofs. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Statement of Subject. — Modem Literature Appears to Begin with 
Time of Addison and Pope. , II. Beginnings of Modern Englisli Prose. 
Hobbes's " Leviathan."— Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy?'— Mil- 
ton's Prose. — Change appears with Dryden. III. Definition of French 
Influence. — Predominance of Koman Influence in Renaissance. — 
French Estimate of Homer and Vergil— French Classical Literature. 
IV. Metaphysical Poets : Cowley, Donne, Waller.— The Couplet Suc- 
ceeding the Stanza.— Davenant's " Gondibert." V. The Neglect of 
Milton Page 1 

CHAPTER 11. 

Number of Books Printed at End of Seventeenth Century. — Interest 
in Classics a Hundred Years Earlier.— The Civil Wars had Injured the 
Free Growth of Letters.— Butler's " Hudibras."— Misery of Writers. 
II. Satirical Poetry.— George Gascoigne's " Steele Glas." — Joseph 
Hall's " Satires."— Butler. III. Dryden's " Absalom and xichitophel," 
and " Medal."r-76is Readers.—" The Hind and the Panther."—" Mac 
Flecknoe."- DVyden's Modification of the Poetical Diction. IV. The 
New Spirit Denianding New Translations of Classics.— Chapman and 
Pope. V. Dryden's Versions of Chaucer.— His Clearness; Modern 
Obscurity.— Dryden's " Odes."— His Fauhs 38 

CHAPTER m. 

French Stage as a Model for English Writers. II. Prynne's " Histrio- 
Ma3tix."-^The Puritans Close the Theatres. III. Theatres After the 
Restoration.— The Heroic Plays.— The Heroic Romances.— Pastoral 
Poetry.— The Tales of Chivalry.— Scorn of Elizabethan Drama.— 
Dryden's Plays.— His " State of Innocence."— Lee's Plays.— Otway's. 
IV. Songs of the Restoration. V. Collier's Onslaught on the 
Stage '^^ 



xii Contents. 



CHAPTER lY. 

I. Addison's Early Poems. — The Current Opinions of his Day. — His 
"Blenheim," and John Philips's Poem on the Same Subject. IT. Ad- 
dison's Comments on Gothic Architecture. — The Opinions of his Con- 
temporaries. — Addison on Mountain Scenery. — His Agreement with 
the Men of his Generation. III. Condition of Society. lY. Steele's 
Life. — Early Periodicals. — Dunton's Athenian Gazette. — The Tatler. 
— The Spectator. V. The Papers on Milton. — The Authority of 
Aristotle. — Addison on Ballads. — Influence of Addison's Criticisms in 
Germany ; Gottsched, Bodmer, and Breitinger. — Influence on English 
Novel. — Moral Teaching of the Spectator. — Imitations of the 
Spectator Page 130 

CHAPTER Y. 

The Three Unities. — Conditions Necessary for the Drama. — Early Italian 
Tragedy ; Trissino. — The Unities in France ; Mairet. — Aristotle on 
Tragedy. — Corneille on the Unities; Voltaire; Lessing. — Fall of the 
Unities.— Addison's " Cato." 182 



CHAPTER YI. 

Definition of Poetry. — Prosperous Condition of Men of Letters. — The 
Change in Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole. — Steele; Savage; Swift. 
— Pope ; the Position of Roman Catholics. — Pope's " Pastorals," and 
their Predecessors. — Ambrose Philips ; Gay. II. The " Essay on Criti- 
cism ;" Roscommon's " Essay on Translated Yerse ;" Sheffield's " Essay 
on Poetry." — Didactic Spirit of the Period. — Pope's "Windsor 
Forest."— The Love of Nature.— The "Rape of the Lock."— His 
Translation of Homer. — Relations of Men of Letters to Patrons ; 
Dedications. III. The " Dunciad." — Pope's Yirulence. lY. Free 
Thought in England. — Pope's " Essay on Man." — His " Satires " and 
*' Epistles." 205 



CHAPTER YH. 

The Mediaeval Romances and Tales. — The Picaresque Novels. — The " Laza- 
rillo de Tormes." — " Guzman de Alfarache." — "Paul the Sharper." — 
" The Enghsh Rogue." — Defoe's Novels: " Robinson Crusoe ;" "Col- 
onel Jack." — Grimmelshausen's " Simplicissimus." — Richardson's 
" Pamela." — Marivaux's " Marianne." 282 



Contents. xiii 



CHAPTER YIII. 

Parodies of the Heroic Plays : Fielding's " Tom Thumb " and Carey's 
" Chrononhotonthologos." — Lillo's " George Barnwell." — Its Influence 
in France: Diderot. — ^Lessing. — The Growth of Sensibility. — Rich- 
ardson's " Sir Charles Grandison." — Fielding's " Joseph Andrews."-^ 
Sterne. II. Appearance of Romanticism : Walpole's " Castle of 
Otranto." III. The Poetry. — New Edition of Spenser. — Br. Young's 
Poems. — Dr. Blair. — Boyse. IV. Didactic Poets: Grainger, Arm- 
strong, Dyer. — Milton's Influence Denounced. Y. Thomson's "Sea- 
sons." — Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd." — Gray's "Elegy." — 
Love of Mountain Scenery. — Collins Page 323 



CHAPTER IX. 

I. Goldsmith's Prose and Verse. — Conservative Teachings of the Critics. 
— V. Knox and Dr. Johnson. — The Rambler, — Johnson's " Irene," 
— Boswell's " Life." II. Ossian. III. Chatterton's Poems. — Percy's 
" Reliques." IV. German Literature in the Eighteenth Century : 
Canitz, Besser. — Goethe's " Werther." — English Judgments of Ger- 
man Writers. — Coleridge. — Lamb. — The Anti- Jacobin Review. V. 
Burns. — Cowper. — Thomson. — Goldsmith. — Wordsworth's Early 
Poems. VI. Conclusion 396 

INDEX 443 



ENGLISH LlTEPiATUPtE 



IN 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



CHAPTER I. 

I. Whatevek the period that may be chosen as the 
starting-point in the study of literature, and especially of 
modern literature, it is necessary to go back to find out 
the origin of the theories and the formulas then existing, 
to see what influences were at work, and to learn the 
general current of the thought of the time. Even if these 
lectures began with Chaucer, it is obvious that we should 
have to study Chaucer's indebtedness to Italian models 
and to mediaeval literature before we could fully compre- 
hend his precise position ; and in beginning with the 
writers of the Restoration period, while we shall have to 
study briefly those authors who went before as well as 
some of those who lived in other countries, we have as a 
sort of excuse for choosing this as a starting-point that 
with these writers what we feel to be modern literature 
beo-ins. 

Of course, this is not a scientific division. By no 
stretch of language can Shakspere oV Ben Jonson be 
numbered among ancient authors : all that I mean is 



2 English Literature. 

this, that Addison and Pope are the first writers of whom 
we feel that they are, so to speak, our fellow-citizens rather 
than remote beings whom we admire for their intellectual 
gifts. As Vernon Lee puts it, in speaking of the Italian 
writers of the last century : " It is in dealing with them 
that we first find that Ave have to do no longer with our 
remote ancestors living in castellated houses, travelling on 
horseback, fighting in the streets, and carousing at ban- 
quets,but with the grandfathers of our grandfathers, steady, 
formal, hypocritical people, paying visits in coaches, going 
to operas, giving dinner-parties, and litigating and slan- 
dering rather than assassinating and poisoning." * 

This feeling is due to many causes. The fact that civ- 
ilization was then firmly settled gave a different tone to 
literature. Earlier, the joyous pride in the possession of 
national life, which was strongly felt in the time of Eliza- 
beth, on account of the awakening of that age to the con- 
sciousness of new powers ; the great discoveries in phys- 
ical science ; the opening of unknown lands ; the revela- 
tion of the beauties of classical literature ; the unaccus- 
tomed religious freedom — all these things inspired the 
writers of what we call the Elizabethan period Avith a 
sort of primal fire and energy which make them seem re- 
mote from our cooler, critical days. 

They appeared even more remote to our ancestors at 
the time of Queen Anne. Then the pride of national life 
had faded into political rancor, and the early enthusiasm 
for science had been succeeded by a period of patient re- 
search and examination of detail. The Royal Society 
was founded in 1JI62^ and it had formed a nucleus for the 
reception and dissemination of ncAV discoA^eries. What 
had been Avidesprcad superstitions gaA^e Avay before neAv 

* "Stuilies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy," p. 10. 



English Literature. ' 3 

truths : astrology, for instance, lost its hold on the teach- 
ers of the people ; witchcraft ceased to be believed in. 
The world was freed from a dead weight of idle terrors. 
Bacon's influence, too, helped to turn the current of men's 
thoughts to material progress, so that what we feel to be 
the underlying principles of modern civilization began to 
be fixed towards the end of the seventeenth century. Ad- 
miration for intellectual greatness does not produce this 
feeling of kinship so surely as does agreement in looking 
at practical questions, and our full comprehension of the 
past, and our consequent sympathy with it, begin practi- 
cally with the generation to which Dryden belonged. All 
before then seems to belong to the imagination ; he and 
his contemporaries appear to be the first to fall within 
the range of our observation. Then, too, not only is the 
sequence of thought unbroken since that time — for, it must 
be distinctly borne in mind, this sequence cannot be bro- 
ken — but we have abundant material from which to study 
its advance ; and the whole intellectual life of the present 
century is the direct outcome of what was hoped or feared, 
taught or denounced, in the last century. It is time that 
we cease to repeat one of its faults, and learn to treat our 
predecessors with the respect they deserve. 

This is particularly our duty now when we boast our 
ability to enjoy all varieties of literary work, when we 
have a kind word for every man who has any claim to 
greatness. Of one thing we may be sure, that this uni- 
versal taste accompanies meagre performance in the way 
of creation, l^ow, for instance, when the English drama 
is entirely a thing of the past, the taste of the reading 
public is exceedingly catholic ; but if at the present time 
real plays were written which interested us, our feelings 
would be enlisted in behalf of any older dramatist who 
seemed to support our theory of how plays should bo 



4 Englis?t Literature. 

written, and against those who did not. At the time of 
the Restoration, Shakspere's fame had greatly diminish- 
ed ; yet there was considerable interest in the drama, and 
the qualities that were most admired were very differ- 
ent from those of the Elizabethan era : the zeal which 
animated the playwrights after 1660, their eagerness for 
correctness, rendered them only more sensitive to what 
seemed to them to be Shakspere's roughness. More- 
over, to take the dramatic literature alone, the original 
native vigor had gone out, giving place, as we shall see 
more at length hereafter, to a form of dramatic composi- 
tion which substituted a very artificial mode of composi- 
tion for the wild luxuriousness of the great play-writers. 
The time had become a critical one : people had begun to 
study methods and workmanship, to make comparisons 
between different theories, and to let observation replace 
inspiration. This, too, is another point of resemblance be- 
tween that time and our own. 

II, Another reason why this period seems closely con- 
nected with the present is, that it was then that Eng- 
lish prose began to be written — a prose which we can 
understand without difficulty, which, except that it is 
much more intelligible, is practically the prose of the pres- 
ent day. This may be better illustrated by a few ex- 
amples than it can be described in many pages. Thus, to 
study some of the earlier prose * in Hobbes's " Leviathan " 
(1651), we find this method of writing (p. 170) : "And as 
to Rebellion in particular against Monarchy ; one of the 
most frequent causes of it, is the Reading of the books of 
Policy, and Histories of the ancient Greeks, and Romans ; 
from which, young men, and all others that are unprovided 



* Nathanael Ingelo's " Bentivoglio and Urania," 1650, is exceptionally 
well written* 



English Literature, 5 

of the Antidote of solid Keason, receiving a strong and 
delightful impression of the great exploits of war, at- 
chieved by the Conductors of their Armies, receive withal 
a pleasing Idea of all they have done besides ; and imagine 
their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the 
semulation of particular men, but from the vertue of 
their popular form of government ; not considering the 
frequent Seditions, and Civil wars, produced by the imper- 
fection of their Policy. From the reading, I say, of such 
books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because 
the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses 
of Policy, make it lawful and laudable, for any man so to 
do ; provided before he do it, he call him Tyrant. For 
they say not Regicide, that is, killing of a king, but Ty- 
rannicide, that is, killing of a Tyrant, is lawfulL From 
the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive 
an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth 
enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all slaves. 
I say they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an 
opinion ; not they that live under a Popular Government: 
for they find no such matter. In summe, I cannot imagine 
how anything can be more prejudicial to a Monarchy, 
than the allowing of such things to be publiquely read, 
without present applying of such correctives of discreet 
Masters, as are fit to take away their Venome : Which 
Venome I will not doubt \to compare to the biting of a mad 
Dog, which is a disease the Physicians call Hydrophobia, 
or fear of Water. For as he that is so bitten, has a con- 
tinual torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth water ; and is 
in such an estate, as if the poyson endeavoured to convert 
him into a Dog : So when a Monarchy is once bitten to 
the quick, by those Democratical writers, that continually 
snarle at that estate ; it wanteth nothing more than a 
strong Monarch, which nevertheless, out of a certain Ty- 



6 English Literature. 

rannophohia, or fear of being strongly governed, when 
they have him, they ahhorre." 

Another example may be taken from Burton's " Anato- 
my of Melancholy" (1621) : "Chess-play is a good and 
witty exercise of the mind for some kind of men, and fit 
for such melancholy, Rhasis holds, as are idle, and have 
extravagant, impertinent thoughts, or troubled with cares, 
nothing better to distract their mind, and alter their medi- 
tations : invented (some say) by the general of an army in 
a famine, to keep soldiers from mutiny : but if it proceed 
from overmuch study, in such a case it may do more harm 
than good ; it is a game too troublesome for some men's 
brains, too full of anxiety, all out as bad as study ; besides 
it is a testy, choleric game, and very offensive to him that 
loseth the mate. William the Conqueror, in his younger 
years, playing at chess with a Prince of France (Dauphine 
was not annexed to that crown in those days), losing a 
mate, knocked the chess-board about his pate, which was 
a cause afterward of much enmity between them." 

Perhaps more characteristic is this : " He that shall 
but see that geometrical tower of Garezenda at Bologna 
in Italy, the steeple and clock at Strasburg, will admire 
the effects of art, or that engine of Arcliimedes, to remove 
the earth itself, if he had but a place to fasten his instru- 
ment : Archimedis Cochlea, and rare devices to corrivate 
waters, musical instruments, and tri-syllable echoes, again, 
again, and again repeated, with myriads of such. What 
vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for prof- 
it, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, etc. ! 
their names alone are the subject of whole volumes, we 
have thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libra- 
ries full well furnished like so many dishes of meat, served 
out for several palates ; and he is a very block that is 
affected with none of them." 



English Literature. / 

There is no need of many such mstances to prove the 
general rule that English prose is a modern acquirement. 
Even Milton, with his wonderful ear for rhythm, was often 
as clumsy as the others when he undertook to write prose, 
which was the work, as he said, of his left hand. For 
instance (" The Reason of Church Government Urged 
Against Prelaty," lib. i. chap, i.) : " To come within the 
narrowness of Household Government, observation will 
shew us many deep Counsellors of State and Judges do 
demean themselves incorruptly in the settled course of 
affairs, and many worthy Preachers upright in their Lives, 
powerful in their Audience ; but look upon either of these 
Men where they are left to their own disciplining at home, 
and you shall soon perceive, for all their single knowledge 
and uprightness, how deficient they are in the regulating 
of their own Family ; not only in what may concern the 
virtuous and decent composure of their minds in their 
several places, but that which is of a lower and easier per- 
formance, the right possessing of the outward Vessel, their 
Body, in Health or Sickness, Rest or Labour, Diet or Absti- 
nence, whereby to render it more pliant to the Soul, and use- 
ful to the Common-wealth: when if men were but as good 
to discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their Horses 
and Hawks, it could not be so gross in most households." 

These extracts are not intended to throw doubts on 
Hobbes's humor. Burton's learning, or Milton's eloquence ; 
and I pass over Bacon's simplicity, Hooker's fine harmo- 
nies, and Jeremy Taylor's poetical prose, contenting myself 
with showing that before the Restoration there was no 
practical, every-day prose. Milton, when, as he said, he 
wished " to soar a little," had a magnificent abundance of 
words at his command, and at times he broke out into a 
rich poetical prose. But when he had to write some plain 
description, his prose lumbered as clumsily as a heavy cart 

/ 



8 English Literature. 

over rough paving-stones. The same man who could write 

such lines as 

" From morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star," 

seemed when he was writing prose to have lost all knowl- 
edge of syntax, and all appreciation of the balance of a 
sentence. The trouble was that the writers before Dry- 
den would weigh down their prose with numberless paren- 
theses, side-remarks, and let their sentences involve them- 
selves inextricably. Only when their prose took on a 
poetical form could they command it. Of Bunyan, on 
the other hand, who knew nothing of the classicisms which 
so often embarrassed his more learned contemporaries, 
but who was the master of a true colloquial style, I shall 
speak later. That this awkward form of writing should 
have lasted long, need not be wondered at. In the first 
place, there was no great reading public that sliould de- 
mand clearness. Milton's pam23hlets were read by scholars 
who probably thought that in reading English instead of 
Latin they were making sufficient sacrifice to indolence ; 
and the practice of writing awkward Latin made them tol- 
erant of clumsy English. Then, what we see of the present 
condition of the German language may serve to show us 
that it is only by a great deal of attrition that a simple 
style is produced. We never open a German book with- 
out noticing the artificial construction and shapeless form 
of the German sentence, both of which are sure to dis- 
appear in time as the language is more used. If we read 
Plattdeutsch, we find perfectly simple constructions ; and 
so, in the books that were read by the populace in the 
middle of the seventeenth century, we find a style which 
is readily intelligible to us nowadays. It was pedantry 



English Literature. g 

that injured the English style then, just as it does the Ger- 
man now. Howell's "Letters," to be sure (1618-1650), were 
written in an easy, graceful manner ; but then he not only 
could boast that he was able to pray in a separate language 
for every day of the week and in seven on Sunday, but 
he also was familiar with foreign literatures, and doubtless 
copied Balzac, the famous letter- writer who had really noth- 
ing to say, and so devoted himself to saying that very well. 

What produced the change in writing English prose 
we may take to have been, as Mr. Saintsbury has said 
in his life of Dryden, in the " English Men of Letters " 
series, " the influences of the pulpit, of political discussion, 
of miscellaneous writing — partly fictitious, partly discur- 
sive — and, lastly, of literary criticism." All of these things, 
we may notice, were different varieties of the one great 
cause, practice. When only scholars read, the theatre sup- 
plied the literary pabulum of the great majority of the 
people ; the Puritans read the Bible, and but little else — 
and the "Pilgrim's Progress" shows how the populace 
had made the phraseology of the Bible their own ; but 
as political matters became of more general interest, the 
pamphlets adapted themselves to the wants of readers. 

There can, too, be but little doubt that those who were 
accustomed to listening rather than to reading acquired a 
tolerance for spoken words which those who are mainly 
accustomed to reading do not enjoy. As Dr. Johnson 
said when he snatched the book from some one who began 
to read aloud to him, we can read much more easily with 
our eyes than with our ears : and so doubtless we have lost 
to some extent the possibility of comprehending at once 
the long sentences of plays which our ancestors grasped 
at once. This may to some extent explain, what is other- 
wise not very clear, why ignorant audiences enjoyed, for 

instance, Shakspere's and Ben Jonson's plays, which we 

1* 



10 English Literature. 

prefer to read by ourselves ; how these comparatively igno- 
rant people were able to listen intelligently to long decla- 
mations. This, however, is but a digression. 

The extent to which theology was studied we can hard- 
ly imagine at present ; and the hot discussions that raged 
on all sorts of ecclesiastical questions were far from having 
a civilizing effect on literature. 

III. With the Restoration, however, there came new 
influences. Questions of politics, as I have said, presented 
themselves for settlement, and the long-winded style soon 
ceased to find readers. 

It is customary to explain the change in literature by 
ascribing the various modifications to what is called the 
French influence which entered the country with the re- 
turn of Charles II. There is a great deal of truth in the 
statement, but not enough to give a complete explanation 
of the striking differences between the literature of the 
Elizabethan era and what we may vaguely call that of 
Queen Anne. And, if the statement were precise, it would 
still be necessary to explain what is meant by the French 
influence. Taken vaguely, the French influence in litera- 
ture lay in the direction of correctness, especially in the 
way of correctness as compared with the work of rough, 
untutored genius. Yet the tendency towards precision and 
the observance of rules was more widespread than might be 
imagined by those who think they wholly account for it 
by calling it French. We may ask, meanwhile, how did 
the French happen to be interested in it ? and, also, by 
whom were their rules imposed upon the English ? 

We are all familiar with the enormous influence of the 
Renaissance on -modern society. The light came from an- 
tiquity that expelled the dull gloom of the dark ages, 
and the world seemed young again. The fall of Con- 
stantinople in 1453 sent a number of Greeks to seek new 



English Literature. 1 1 

homes in Europe, where they should be secure from Mahom- 
etan tyranny. Already, too, in Italy scholars had begun 
to take their shattered relations to the past. While the 
rest of Europe was still in darkness, more than a glimmer- 
ing of light had begun to dawn in that peninsula. There 
were scholars already there who had made the best of 
such advantages as they had, and were eager for more. 
The invention of the printing-press, the first of the great 
mechanical inventions, in 1450, suddenly brought copies of 
the ancient authors to hungry readers, and literature began 
anew. The mediaeval literature, it must be remembered, 
was considerable in amount ; but it had grown artificial 
and unfruitful when these finer models were rediscovered. 
It is impossible at this time to describe the growth of lit- 
erature in the different countries of Europe. There is 
opportunity for the mention of but a few of the important 
facts connected with the way in which literature developed 
itself. In the first place, we should bear in mind the ex- 
tent to which the European knowledge of antiquity is, in 
the main, a knowledge of Rome, and of Greece through 
Rome. Roman literature was for the most part an awk- 
ward copy of Greek originals : its early native develop- 
ment was crowded out of existence by the superior Hel- 
lenic culture. The rude mythology of Latium gave way 
before the Greek gods and goddesses with all their legen- ] 
dary history ; the humbler Latin deities surviving only in \ 
the simple faith of the rustics. The Greek arts found new 
patrons in Italy, and almost all Roman literature was made 
to follow Greek models. Horace's odes, Terence's plays, ■ 
Vergil's free use of Homer, sufiiciently illustrate this. Now, 
when the classical literature was discovered anew, Greek 
and Roman writers were not so clearly distinguished as \ 
they have been in later times. They were classical writers, 
and that was enough. 



12 English Literature. 

What we notice in modern Europe is this, that it was 
much more commonly the Roman than the Grecian writ- 
ers who served as models. Thus the modern drama of 
Italy, France, and England began with copying Seneca in 
tragedy, and Plautus and Terence in comedy. The pas- 
torals of the same countries, which were long a favorite 
method of writing, were imitations of Yergil and Calpur- 
nius rather than of the Greek originals.* 

In a hasty sketch of the work of centuries, only some- 
what general statements can be made ; and, without going 
into further particulars or noting the few exceptions, it 
may be enough to say that modern literature was built up 
on a tradition of a tradition. At first, the effect of the 
Renaissance was almost entirely a stimulating one. The 
long-winded romances, the dull allegories, the artificial 
poetry of mediaeval literature were driven out — in fact, 
they were already dead, as was mediaeval art,f and in their 
place came the inspiring forces of wit, grace, eloquence, and 
taste. In remoter countries, as Spain and England, the ef- 

* Symonds, "Renaissance in Italy," v. 132, note, says: "The move we 
study Italian literature in the sixteenth century, the move we are com- 
pelled to acknowledge that humanism and all its consequences w^ere a re- 
vival of Latin culture, only slightly tinctuved with the simpler and purer 
influences of the Greeks." 

Sidney said of Gorhoditc, in his " Defense of Poesy," that it was " full 
of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of 
Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most de- 
lightfully teach and so obtain the very end of Poesy." 

Scaliger, " Poetices," vi. 6, says: " Seneca quem nnllo Graecorum majes- 
tate inferiorem existimo, cultu vero ac nitore etiam Euripide majorem. lu- 
ventiones sane illorum sunt : at majestas carminis, sonus, spiritus ipsius." 

" Malherbe . . . n'estimoit point du tout les Grecs. . . . Pour les 
Latins, ceux qu'il aimoit le plus etoit Stace, et, apres lui, Seneque le Tra- 
gique." — Racan, " Vie de Malherbe." 

t Vide Renan, " Melanges d'Histoire et de Voyages," p. 209 et seq. 



English Literature. 13 

feet appeared later, but it came, if anything, with greater re- 
sults than in France and Italy ; and, with the new learning, 
came a natural desire to do their work well : to settle the 
laws which were to rule literary production. 

It will always be found that a period of great creative 
fervor is followed by one of careful workmanship. The 
EUzabethan drama was in many ways devoid of art. In 
Marlowe there are magnificent bits of exaggeration; in 
Shakspere there are false notes — although nowadays, as 
was the case in Pope's time, reference to them is dan- 
gerous : 

" One tragic sentence if I dare deride, 
* * * * * 

How will our fathers rise up in a rage, 
And swear all shame is lost in George's age !" 

and it is easy to see how the same quality existed in the 
later writers until we come to Davenant, in whom, as we 
shall see, forced fury became a sort of parody of the real- 
ly grand style. Even in Ben Jonson we see the contrast 
of artistic workmanship ; and his cool precision found many 
admirers and imitators. 

Then, too, with the complications of politics and the 
fervor of religious dissensions, the theatre became the re- 
sort of courtiers alone, and lost its authority as a place for 
the expression of national feeling. With the rise of Puri- 
tanism English life was severed into two distinct branches. 
One clung to literature, the other to religion, and it is per- 
haps only in our own days that the two currents are again 
uniting. 

As soon as literature became the property of the ruling 
classes, it of course lost its national spirit and acquired 
a sort of cosmopolitan poUsh. Nowhere had literature be- 
come so much the possession of the aristocracy as in 
France, where the court was the sole patron of literary 



14 English Literature. 

fame. What it was there in the seventeenth century may 
be seen in Taine's essay on Racine ; and the literature 
of France was built up almost entirely on that of Rome. 
The French, for instance, cared very little for Homer un- 
til this century, as may be readily shown. 

In the revival of letters, the French naturally found the 
acquisition of Latin infinitely easier than that of Greek,* 
and, moreover, Vergil's fame had lived throughout the dark 
ages — mainly, to be sure, from the poet's reputation as a 
magician ; the other great writers were almost forgotten. 
In the sixteenth century, Julius Caesar Scaliger, in his 
"Poetices," lib. v. (1561), lavished every sort of praise 
on Vergil, and had no good words for Homer. With what 
judgment he did this may be gathered from the way in 
which he went astray in some of his comments. In the 
sixth book of the "^neid," 667, Vergil placed a certain 
Musseus at the head of a band of poets — a Musaeus w^hose 
name alone has come down to us. Scaliger \ imagined that 
he meant the author of " Hero and Leander " \ — the poem 
which was paraphrased rather than translated by Marlowe 
and Chapman, begun, that is, by Marlowe and finished by 

* As to the way in which the Cathohc Church threw its weight on the 
side of Latin as against Greek Uterature, see Nisard, " Litterature Fran- 
^iiise," i. 431, and Mark Pattison's " Casaubon," p. 113. 

f This was the genei^al opinion. "When Aldus Manutius conceived his 
great idea of issuing Greek literature from the Venetian press, he put 
forth 'Hero and Leander' first of all in 1498, with a preface that ran as 
follows : ' I was desirous that Musa3us, the most ancient poet, should 
form a prelude to Aristotle and the other sages who will shortly be im- 
printed at my hands.' "— Symonds, " Greek Poets," ii. 348 [Am. ed.]. 

See also Waller's poem, " On the King's Escape." Addison, Spectator, 
No. 62, expresses his doubts on account of the conceits in the poem. 
Ci-iticism, like everything else, is a plant of slow growth. 

X About 1540 appeared in Spanish Boscan's blank-verse translation of 
"Hero and Leander;" in 1541, Marot's French version. 



" English Literature. 15 

Chapman, and published among Marlowe's works. Chap- 
man, too, thought that the original poem was by the older 
Musseus, as we see by the last line : 

" They [Hero and Leander] were the first that ever poet sung." 

The Greek poem was apparently written by the gram- 
marian Musseus in the fifth century of the Christian era. 
Scaliger, having fallen into this error, went on to prove 
that the author of the " Hero and Leander " was in every 
way superior to Homer, saying, " If Musseus had written 
what Homer wrote, we may conclude that he would have 
done much better :" * " Arbitror enim si Musasus ea quae 
Homerus scripsit, scripsisset, longe melius eum scripturum 
judicemus." 

For more than two centuries Scaliger 's opinion of the 
superiority of Yergil remained the opinion of the French 
nation. There were, to be sure, men who knew how to 
admire both : La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau, and others ; 
but, in general, the French agreed with Voltaire in put- 
ting Homer below Tasso.f Voltaire said ("Essai sur les 
Mceurs," chap, cxxi.) : "As for the 'Iliad,' let every 
reader ask himself what his judgment would be if he 
were to read that poem and Tasso for the first time 
without knowing the names of the authors or when the 
poems were written, and deciding only from the pleasure 

* "Poetices," v. 215 et seq. : "Musaei hiatus rari, et lectis utitur verbis." 

See further de Homero et Vergilio : '■ Loquax Achilles in concione minas 
perfert deteriores, flet etiam apud matrcm, atque hie est, a quo virum fortis- 
simum Hectorem interfectum eredi vult ? Nihil piitidius Hectoris morte." 
*' Homeri epitheta ssepe f rigida, aut puerilia, aut locis inepta." 

Ronsard seems to have been one of the earliest of Greek-reading French- 
men. One of his sonneis begins, 

" Je veux lire en trois jours I'lliade d'Homere, 
Et pour ce, Corydon, ferme bien I'huis sur moi." 

t Vide Sainte-Beuve, " Causeries du Lundi," xii. 78 et seq. 



1 6 English Literature. 

that each gave him. Would he not in every respect give 
the preference to Tasso ? Would he not find in the Italian 
poet more control, interest, variety, precision, grace, and 
that delicacy which sets off the sublime ? In a few centu- 
ries all comparison between them will be impossible." 

Need we wonder that Goethe said (" Eckermann," Feb. 
24, 1830) : " It took the French some time to appreciate the 
great merit of Homer : there was required for this noth- 
ing less than a complete revolution in their civilization " ? 

The French in the age of Louis XIV. had acquired a 
civilization that was in many ways superior to that of all 
the rest of Europe, and, while England was led to follow 
the literary methods of France by causes that were entire- 
ly national, the great reputation of the Augustan age of 
French literature naturally inspired imitation. And, to 
repeat, French literature, like that of Italy, was especially 
a copy of the Roman literature, which, as I have said, was 
itself a copy of that of Greece. Just as a light that is re- 
flected into a dark corner by a series of mirrors loses some- 
thing with every additional mirror,* so did the inspiration 
of Greek literature, through Rome and France, shine with 
feeble glow in what is sometimes called the Augustan age 
of English letters. Greek literature was original ; and 
what is best in all literature is the most natural form of 
expression — a form that grows from the soil. We shall see 
later how the revival of the natural forces in English 
and French, and their appearance in German literature, 
coincided with renewed study of the Greek. 

This digression, however, must not make us lose sight 
of the question now before us, which is the amount and 



* Dr. Johnson said ("Boswell," vii. 188: April 29, 1778): "Modern 
writers are the moons of literature ; they shine with reflected light — with 
liffht borrowed from the ancients." 



English Literature. ly 

nature of the French influence. We are always too ready 
to think that we have explained a difficulty if we are able 
to give it a name, and in the present case the explanation 
of the change in English literature might be left where it 
is without further discussion. Yet a more careful exam- 
ination will make it clear that the subject, which is obscure 
at the best, needs more light. Fully to understand the 
relation of the writers of this period to their predecessors 
and to their foreign rivals, we must bear in mind the com- 
plex sequences of the Renaissance. When all the majesty 
of antiquity broke upon Europe, there seemed to be but 
one feeling possible : that of unrestrained admiration be- 
fore its great glory. Writers — and the writers do but 
represent the reading public — fairly prostrated themselves 
before the past. They turned away from their own lit- 
erature to welcome the newly discovered one. The first 
thing to be done was to study the writings of Greece and 
Rome, and everywhere, in Italy, in France, in England, we 
find the effort was made to remodel the vernacular after 
the classic languages. Boccaccio, Mr. Symonds tells us, 
" sought to give the fulness and sonority of Latin to the 
periods of Italian prose. He had the Ciceronian cadence 
and the labyrinthine sentences of Livy in view." * And 
Boccaccio's prose became the model copied by later writ- 
ers when it was finally settled that Latin was not to be 
the literary language of Italy. 

In France we find Ronsard complaining of the meagre- 
ness of his native tongue, while at the same time he de- 
nounces those who avoided the difficulty by writing in 
Latin. He, too, was abused for introducing classicisms 
into the French language. Yet how could he rest sat- 
isfied with the comparatively meagre vocabulary and 

* "Kenaissauce in Italy," iv. 133 ; v. 246 et seq. 



1 8 English Literature, 

homely construction of his time when he turned his atten- 
tion to the imitations of the classics? These strangers 
demanded more ceremony. They were translated freely 
into the leading modern languages. Sebilet, in his " Poe- 
tique" (1548), says : "Pourtant t'avertis-je que la version 
ou traduction est aujourd'hui le plus frequent et mieux 
rc9u des estimes poetes et des doctes lecteurs."* In the 
same year Sebilet published a metrical translation of the 
" Iphigenia in Aulis " of Eurii3ides. In 1549 also ap- 
peared Du Bellay's " Defense et Illustration de la Langue 
Frangoise." He urged very strongly the intelligent imi- 
tation of the ancients, with a just criticism of translation, 
saying that Demosthenes, Homer, Cicero, and Yergil do 
not sound so well in French as in their original tongue. 
In a translation, " il vous semblera passer de I'ardente 
montagne d'iEtne sur le froid sommet de Caucase. Et 
ce que je dy des langues latine et grecque se doit reci- 
proquement dire de tons les vulgaires." What he urged 
was the intelligent imitation of Greek and Latin, not mere 
slavish copying. Baif translated from the Greek; and in 
this little band we find the most enthusiastic welcome 
given to the Renaissance. 

In England there was very similar enthusiasm. Gas- 
coigne's translation, through the Italian, of the " Jocasta" 
of Euripides (1566), is a familiar instance, and we see the 
same Graeco-Latin revival that found its French equiva- 
lent in the ardor of the Pleiad. In England and Spain 
there was for a time a sort of compromise : to take the 
former country alone, Shakspere stands at the junction 
of two great streams which may represent respectively 
the Middle Ages and classical antiquity. In France the 
wars of the League interrupted the normal growth of lite- 

* Quoted in Egger's " L'Hellenisme en France," i. 260. 



English Literature. 19 

raturo, and when peace again prevailed it was the new, arid 
correctness of Malherbe that defined the narrow channels 
in which French literature was to run for two centuries. 
Malherbe met with fierce opposition : Mademoiselle de 
Gournay, for instance, Montaigne's adopted daughter, ex- 
posed his incompleteness ; but the times were favorable, 
and his commonplace aversion to extravagance, whether 
mediaeval or in imitation of the classics, won the day. 
After all, the classicism of the Pleiad could scarcely hope 
to live : it was as remote from the popular affection as 
was the wearing of togas or the observance of the Pana- 
thenaic festival. Then, too, Malherbe touched the chord 
of patriotism, and in denouncing medisevalism he struck 
what was to be the prevailing note of European civiliza- 
tion for a long time. The nation that did that most effec- 
tually was sure to take the lead. France did this by being 
the first country to give to the world a new literature, 
which was distinctly neither mediseval nor a mere tracing 
over of the classics. It stepped, almost at one stride, from 
the Grseco-Latin period to its own version of classicism, 
while in England we see two very decided movements 
flourishing side by side, both of which finally succumbed 
before the French influence. The most important of these 
was the dramatic, which need not be described here, with 
its close relation to the popular life ; the other, the tone 
of the court, Mnth its pedantic imitation of Italian poetry. 
With the first study of the classics came the attempt to 
employ classical constructions, while euphuism was an 
effort to develop the language in a modern fashion. Lyly, 
as has been clearly shown in an admirable paper by Mr. 
Friedrich Landmann,* imitated an old Spanish writer, 

* " Der Euphuismus, sein Wesen, seine Quelle, seine Geschichte." Gies- 
sen: 1881 ; ^and "New Shakspere Society's Transactions," 1880-2, No. 
XIII. p. 241. 



20 English Literature. 

Guevara, who may be called the founder of what is known 
as Euphuism.* The general groping for new light intro- 
duced a thousand other affectations. Sidney's "Arcadia," 
for example, abounds in imitations of the Spanish pastoral 
romances ; and perhaps even more marked was the influ- 
ence of Sylvester's translation of "Du Bartas," 1598. 
Dryden, it will be remembered, wrote, in his dedication of 
the "Spanish Friar," 1691: "I thought inimitable Spen- 
ser a mean poet in comparison of Sylvester's ' Du Bartas,' 
and was rapt into an ecstasy when I read these lines : 

' Now when the winter's keener breath began 
To crystalhze the Baltic ocean, 
To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods, 
And periwig with snow f the baldpate woods.' 

I am much deceived if this be not abominable fustian." 
Yet Dryden was not the only one who admired this abom- 
inable fustian. Space is lacking for a description of all 



* It is interesting to observe that euphuism still makes an occasional 
appearance in English prose, as alliteration does in English verse, and 
abundant instances of both are to be found in the writings of Swinburne. 
Lyl.y, for instance, wrote many such sentences as this : " Gentleman, as 
you may suspect me of idlenesse in giving eare to your talke, so may you 
convince me of lightnesse in answering such toyes : certes, as you have 
made mine eares glow at the rehearsall of your love, so have you galled my 
heart with the remembraunce of your folly." Swinburne says : " The buoy- 
ant beauty of surrounding verse, the ' innumerable laughter' ; the profound 
murmur of its many measures, the fervent flow of stanzas now like the 
ripples and now like the gulfs of the sea," etc. ("Essays," p. 255). Lyly 
might have written this line : *' Neither by defect of form nor by any de- 
fault of force " (ib. p. 108). 

For conceits outdoing even Lyly, see Pater, " Studies in the History of 
the Renaissance," passim. 

f Sylvester says " wool." Cf. this phrase of Du Bartas, " monts enfa- 
rines d'une neige eternelle." But see Sainte-Beuve, "Poeiie du XVI. 
Siecle," p. 68. 



English Literature. 21 

the affectations of the writers at the time of Elizabeth. 
Gongorism in Spain, and Marinism in Italy, show how 
widespread was the confusion which the new cultivation 
wrought in the language. Can we be surprised that Mal- 
herbe carried the reaction against conceits as far as he did, 
when we read such passages as these from " Du Bartas " ? 
The world, he tells us, would have remained in a state of 
confusion, if the divine Word 

"N'eut comme siringue dedans ces membres morts 
Je ne sais quel esprit qui meut tout ce grand corps." 

or this, expressive of a galloping horse ? 

" Le champ plat bat, abat, detrappe, grappe, attrappe 
Le vent qui va devant — " ^- 

Other examples of his lawlessness may be found : " II 
gagne du dauphin la ba-branlante echine;" " Sur pe-petil- 
lant;" "La peur, a qui ba-bat incessamment la flanc." 
These may be compared with such gems as the following 
in English from A. Fraunce's translation of Tasso's " Lam- 
entations of Amyntas," 1587 : 

" I'le quench theyr thirst by my hartbloud, 
Blynde boy's, proud gyrle's thirst : and glut their eyes with aboundant 
Streams of purpled gore of tootoo wretched Amyntas." 

Malherbe killed these affectations with one blow ; in 
England they died a lingering death. In France, Mal- 
herbe was followed by Corneille, Racine, and Boileau, who 
flourished under a strong government that embodied the , 
most complete reaction against extravagance of every sort. 
License in literature was as impossible as political free- 
dom, and the completeness with which France adopted 
the idea of submission to authority made its brilliant civ- 
ilization the model for the rest of Europe. England, on 
the contrary, was ruled by divided counsels. The great 



22 Miglish Literature. 

dramatists held their position by reason of their close re- 
lation with the peoi3le. Yet the court followed the pre- 
vailing fashions of Spain and Italy. 

IV. Let us take, for instance, those whom Dr. Johnson 
called the metaphysical poets, as if metaphysics were sy- 
nonymous with obscurity. According to him, " They were 
wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising. 
. . . Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamen- 
tation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they 
hoped had never been said before." Yet, he acknowledged, 
" great labor, directed by great ability, is never wholly lost ; 
if they frequently threw away their wit upon false con- 
ceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; 
if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the 
carriage. ... If their greatness seldom elevates, their acute- 
ness often surprises; if the imagination is not always grati- 
fied, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are 
employed ; and in the mass of materials which ingenious 
absurdity has thrown together, genuine and useful knowl- 
edge may be sometimes found buried, perhaps, in grossness 
of expression, but useful to those who know their value ; 
and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity and 
polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have 
more propriety, though less copiousness, of sentiment." 
Donne and Cowley were the chief offenders whom Dr. 
Johnson brings into court. Donne was borne in 1573, 
nine years after Shakspere, and he died in 1631, so that it 
is impossible to charge him with being the product of a 
degenerate age. Dr. Johnson quotes many examples of 
his poetry to show that the characteristics of his school 
were "enormous and disgusting hyperboles," "unexpected 
and unnatural thoughts," " violent and unnatural fictions," 
" slight and trifling sentiments." He quotes from Donne : 



English Literature. 23 

" Though God be our true glass through which we see 
All, since the being of all things is he, 
Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive 
Things in proportion fit, by perspective 
Deeds of good men ; for by their living here, 
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near." 

and asks, "Who but Donne would have thought that a 
good man is a telescope ?" Yet naturally, m writing the 
life of Cowley, he had most to say about the form which 
the fault took in that writer. Now, to understand Donne's 
position, it is essential to remember that the poetry of the 
time of Elizabeth was of two kinds, that of the stage and 
that of the court. That of the stage was the expression 
of the national feeling ; that of the court was the expres- 
sion of but a small number of cultivated people familiar 
with Spanish and Italian literatures, who were already 
affected by the euphuism which Lyly's "Euphues" 
(1580) introduced into England by those foreign sources. 
An example of it may be found in Shakspere's "Love's 
Labour's Lost," where are these lines (I. i. 163) : 

" Our court, you know, is haunted 

With a refined traveller of Spain : 
A man in all the world's new fashion planted, 

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain ; 
One whom the music of his own vain tongue 

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony ;" 

and later in the play the King of Navarre and his lords for- 
swear 

' ' Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise. 
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, 
Figures pedantical ;" 

and determine to woo henceforth 

" In russet yeas and honest kersey noes." 

Sidney's "Sonnets" (1591) show the same tendency to 



24 English Literature. 

making a display of wit, and Donne carries the tendency 
very far. The affectations that marked the metaphysical 
school then were not mere inventions of a later time ; 
they were not a reaction against the vigor of the play- 
writers : they were rather one of the forms in which the 
renewed intellectual excitement of the Renaissance found 
expression. The fantastic poetry was coincident in time 
with the glory of the English stage, and some of the poets, 
who when they wrote for the court racked heaven and 
earth for all sorts of conceits, wrote plays which are 
models of dignity and vigor : Beaumont is an instance. 
In fact, it is impossible to overlook a certain resemblance 
between the literary school of the court at the time of 
Elizabeth and the neo-romantic sestheticism of the present 
day. The language and emotions of Bunthorne, for in- 
stance, may represent for us something which will enable 
us to understand how euphuism and its results struck our 
ancestors. 

When the stage was in its prime, the metaphysical 
school was less prominent : the poems were read, but they 
do not to our mind stand as representatives of that period. 
Yet their influence remained ; and when the stage lost its 
glory, and the popular impulse that inspired it took the 
form of Puritanic zeal, the literature of the court remained 
true to its old principles of literary affectation, and Cow- 
ley (1618-1667) preserved very closely the traditions of 
the school of Donne. It is easy to turn Cowley into ridi- 
cule. Dr. Johnson, as I have said, collected a number of 
ludicrous bits from his poems. For example : 

" All armed in brass, the richest dress of war 
(A dismal gloi'ious sight !), he shone afar. 
The sun himself started with sudden fright, 
To see his beams return so dismal bright ;" 

and this : 



English Literature. 25 

*' His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws 
Tear up the ground ; tlien runs he wild about, 
Lashing his angry tail and roaring out. 
Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there ; 
Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear ; 
Silence and horror fill the place around ; 
Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound ;" 

or this ode to the Muse : 

" Go, the rich chariot instantly prepare; 
The queen, my muse, will take the air : 
Unruly Fancy with strong Judgment trace ; 
Put in nimble-footed Wit, 
Smooth-paced Eloquence join with it ; 
Sound Memory with young Invention place ; 
Harness all the winged race : 
Let the postilion Nature mount, and let 
The coachman Art be set ; 
And let the airy footmen, running all beside, 
Make a long row of goodly pride. 
Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences, 
In a well-worded dress ; 

And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and rueful Lies, 
In all their gaudy liveries. 
Mount, glorious queen ! thy travelling throne, 
And bid it to put on," etc. 

It is not hard to imagine the emotions with which Dr. 
Johnson must have read these lines. Yet Cowley was 
better than his faults. His poem on the death of Hervey 
contains some fine passages : 

"Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights. 
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, 
Till the Ledsean stars, so fam'd for love. 

Wonder' d at us from above ! 
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine ; 
But search of deep philosophy. 
Wit, eloquence, and poetry. 
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine." 
2 



26 English Literature. 

While Cowley, after all, did service to the mechanism 
of literature by his ingenuity, even if, as Dryden said, 
" he could never forgive any conceit which came in his 
way, but swept, like a drag-net, great and small," it was 
Waller who more especially struck out the path which 
was to be followed for about two hundred years ; and to 
do that is what falls to the lot of but few writers. That 
Waller should have been the man to do it, is a thought 
that may arouse the hopes of the most diffident. To us 
he is simply the author of " Go, Lovely Rose," and the 
lines " On a Girdle ;" his other poems rest untouched on 
the shelf. Dryden said of him : " The excellence and dig- 
nity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr. Waller 
taught it ; he first made writing easily an art, first showed 
us to conclude the sense, most commonly, in distichs, which 
in the verse of those before him runs on for so many lines 
together that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." 
That is to say. Waller was the first English poet to use 
the couplet. He began with it in a poem written about 
1623 (he was born in 1605, and died in 1687) in a poem, 
" Of the Danger his Majesty [being Prince] Escaped in the 
Road at St. Andero " — 

" These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge, 
Proud with the burden of so brave a charge, 
With painted oars the youths began to sweep 
Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep ; 
Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war 
Between the wind and tide that fiercely jar. 
As when a sort of lusty shepherds try 
Their force at football, care of victory 
Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast, 
That their encounter seems too rough for jest ; 
They ply their feet, and still the restless ball, 
Tossed to and fro is urged by them all. 
So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds 
And like effect of their contention finds." 



:» English Literature. 2J 

The sea gets rougher, however, 

*' And now no hope of grace 
Among them shines, save in the Prince's face ; 

« 4: 4: * * 

The gentle vessel (wont with state and pride 
On the smooth back of silver Thames to ride) — " 

It will be noticed that boats sail on the " smooth face " of 
Neptune and on the " smooth back " of rivers — 

*' Wanders astonished on the angry main, 
***** 

The pale Iberians had expired with fear, 
But that their wonder did divert their care, 
To see the Prince with danger moved no more 
Than with the pleasm-es of their court before ; 
Godlike his courage seemed, whom nor delight 
Could soften, nor the face of death affright. 
Next to the power of making tempests cease, 
Was in that storm to have so calm a peace." 

Certainly the outlook was bad for poetry when lines 
such as these should set a fashion. They were the model 
which all the writers who hoped for success were grad- 
ually obliged to follow. I could find passages in Waller's 
heroic measure less grotesque than this one, of which the 
sole merit, it seems to me, is technical correctness ; and as 
a favorable specimen I would mention his panegyric on 
Cromwell. Yet the lines just read have been admired in 
their day, and may, without extreme unfairness, show 
what it was that gave him for a time the name of the 
greatest English poet. In his straining for classical illus- 
trations we see very much the same quality that is to be 
noticed in Cowley. Waller, in order to convince us that 
a storm was really severe, tells us, " Great Maro could no 
greater tempest feign ;" and Cowley says that his heart 
was an Etna, which enclosed Cupid's forge instead of Vul- 
can's shop. Allusions to the classics were for a long time 



28 English Literature. 

the common tools of poets. It is in the short pieces, how- 
ever, that Waller's conceits are most striking, as, for in- 
stance, in the one on the head of a stag : 

" fertile head ! which every year 
Could such a crop of wonder bear ! 
The teeming earth did never bring 
So soon, so hard, so huge a thing; 
Which might it never have been cast, 
(Each year's growth added to the last) 
These lofty branches had supplied 
The earth's bold sons' prodigious pride, 
Heaven with these engines had been scaled. 
When mountains heaped on mountains failed." 

In general, indeed, we may say that Waller's lyrics are 
very cold. It was for his management of the heroic 
couplet especially that he was admired. This measure 
had long been in use ; it was Chaucer's favorite form, and 
was derived, doubtless, from the French writers whom 
he knew and the Italian writers whom he translated. It 
was employed by numberless later writers, and generally, 
among the metaphysical school at least, it had become 
very rough and graceless. Thus Donne wrote ("An 
Anatomy of the World," in Works, p. 88) : 

*' Seas are so deep, that whales being struck to-day, 
Perchance to-morrow scarce at middle way 
Of their wished journey's end, the bottom, die : 
And men, to sound depths, so much line untie, 
As one might justly think that there would rise 
At end thereof one of the antipodes : 
If under all a vault infernal be, 
Which sure is spacious, except that we 
Invent another torment, that there must 
Millions into a strait hot room be thrust. 
Then solidness and roundness have no place." . . . 



English Literature. 20 

There is no need of giving other examples of the way 
English writers let the sense run into any desired number 
of lines by means of what are called enjambments. Wal- 
ler was the first English writer who treated the couplet as 
a unit separate and coherent— as, so to speak, a shapely, 
well-defined brick as compared with the stone of different 
sizes that previous artisans made use of.* Before he died 
he found the couplet universally adopted. 

* It may be said that Waller accomplished what many were essaying, 
and that he gave the awkward couplet a new grace. Here are some 
further examples of its earlier treatment (Peyton's " Glasse of Time " 
1620, p. 15): ' 

"We have, great God, that which these never knew. 
Thine own example and the scripture true, 
Thy all divine and holy moral law 
Which these as yet have never heard or saw." 
T. May, " The Victorious Reigne of Edward III," 1633, lib. ii. : 
" Nor yet had Edward in his active mind 
The claim and conquest of great France designed, 
Nor looked abroad ; domestic businesse 
Employ'd his early manhood ; the redresse 
Of those distempers which had grown at home 
Too great for any youth to overcome. 
But such a youth as hi§, had yet detained 
His spirit there." . , . 

In the " Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King," 1638 the vol- 
ume in which Milton's "Lycidas" first appeared, thirteen of the ele-ies 
were in English. Of the twelve— i e., excluding the " Lycidas "—seven 
were in the measure of five feet, three of four feet, the other two of six 
feet. One of the seven runs thus : 

" No, Death ! I'll not examine God's decree, 
Nor question Providence in chiding thee. 
Discreet Religion binds us to admire 
The ways of Providence and not inquire." 

See also Joseph Hall's verses, infra, and compare Sylvester's "Du 
Bartas." 



30 English Literature. 

What the couplet did was to replace the stanza : it 
had previously been employed for rather light subjects, 
and Puttenham, in his "Art of English Poesie" (1589), 
affirmed that the stanza alone was suitable for serious 
topics. Indeed, as Mr. Mark Pattison has shown (Intro- 
duction to his edition of Pope's "Essay on Man," p. 19), 
" the stanza in verse is the analogue of the prose sentence 
as constructed by Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, or Milton. 
Each of these stately periods carries along with it, over 
and above its direct predication, all the conditions and ex- 
ceptions to which the writer wishes to submit that pred- 
ication, all woven into one structure. There is in each 
stanza or sentence so much as fills the mind to the utmost 
strain of its capacity for attention ; and then a pause for 
reflection and digestion." 

Take for an example any stanza from the "Fairy 
Queen" (IV. 2, xvi., for instance) : 

" As when two warlike brigaiidines at sea, 
With murderous weapons arm'd to cruel fight, 
Do meet together on the watery lea, 
They stem each other with so fell despiglit, 
That with the shock of their own heedless might 
Their wooden ribs are shaken nigh asunder ; 
They which from shore b^old the dreadful sight 
Of flashing fire, and hear the ordnance thunder, 

Do greatly stand amaz'd at such unwonted wonder." 

Mr. Pattison goes on : " The same process which broke 
up the composite period of earlier prose into the disjoint- 
ed modern style of short sentences took place in verse. 
The stanza gradually gave way before the couplet." * 

* It is w^orth while noticing, however, how long it was before the couplet 
lost its elasticity. At first, it was broken by enjambments ; in "Waller's 
hands it admitted of almost any prolongation of the sentence. Dryden, 
too, wrote whole paragraphs in this measure. Not until Pope's time did 



English Liter aticre. 31 

Denham is another author to whom the later poets 
(Prior, for instance) expressed their indebtedness for the 
couplet. A few lines from his "Cooper's Hill" (1643) 
will show, I think, that he had considerable mastery of 
versification, in spite of the fact that the sense is contin- 
ued from verse to verse : 

" So fares the stag ; among the enraged hounds, 
Repels their force, and wounds returns for wounds ; 
And as a hero, whom his baser foes 
In troops surround, now these assails, now those, 
Though prodigal of Hfe, disdains to die 
By common hands ; but if he can descry 
Some nobler foe approach, to him he calls, 
And begs his fate, and then contented falls." 

Certainly these lines have something of the smoothness 
which we have learned to associate with the couplet, and 
elsewhere in his writings we may find instances of greater 
mechanical skill. In this very poem, it may be worth 
while to mention, are these lines, which were the despair 
of the later poets of the school : 

" could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
My great example, as it is my theme ! 
Though deep, yet clear ; tho' gentle, yet not dull ; 
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full." 

Another instance of the decay of the stanza and a proof 
that the change was not wholly due to French influence — 
although few will think that any change of the sort has 
but one cause — is Davenant's " Gondibert " (1650). This 
is a most tedious poem, which would never be read, even 

it become the chain, with small links, that held thought firm. We see the 
same gradual growth in the French heroic verse (of twelve syllables). Du 
Bartas and Ronsard let the sense run through many couplets ; this was 
one of Malherbe's main objections to his predecessors. And it was only 
.under Boileau that the couplet finally became a rigid unit. 



32 English Literature. 

if it were short, and which has acquired a mock impor- 
tance by its length, with, however, here and there occa- 
sional poetical lines to relieve the reader's weariness. I 
will quote one or two of these joassages, which may also 
serve to illustrate the form of the stanza : 

" Hei' mind (scarce to her feeble sex akin) 

Did as her birth, her right to empire show ; 
Seem'd careless outward wheu employ 'd within ; 
Her speech, like lovers watch'd, was kind and low." 

And these descriptions of the opening day ; 

" As day new opening fills the hemisphere. 
And all at once ; so quickly every street 
Does by an instant opening full appear, 

When from their dwelhngs busy dwellers meet. 

" From wider gates oppressors sally there ; 

Here creeps th' afflicted through a narrow door ; 
Groans under wrongs he has not strength to bear. 
Yet seeks for wealth to injure others more. 

" Here stooping lab'rers slowly moving are ; 

Beasts to the rich, whose strength grows rude with ease ; 
And would usurp, did not their rulers' care 

With toil and tax their furious strength appease." 

In the preface to this tolerably unreadable poem — the 
preface, by the way, was in the form of a letter to Thomas 
Hobbes, the author of the " Leviathan " — Davenant ex- 
plains " why I have chosen my interwoven stanza of four, 
though I am not obliged to excuse the choice ; for num- 
bers in verse must, like distinct kinds of music, be exposed 
to the uncertain and different taste of several ears. Yet 
I may declare that I believed it would be more pleasant 
to the reader, in a work of length, to give this respite or 
pause between every stanza (having endeavoured that 
each should contain a period) than to run him out of 



English Literatu7'e. 33 

breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rime 
by any lowliness of cadence make the sound less heroic, 
but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of 
music ; and the brevity of the stanza renders it less subtle 
to the composer, and more easy to the singer, which in 
stilo recitativo, when the story is long, is chiefly requisite. 
And this was indeed (if I shall not betray vanity in my 
confession) the reason that prevailed most towards my 
choice of this stanza, and my division of the main work 
into cantos, every canto including a sufficient accomplish- 
ment of some worthy design or action, for I had so much 
heat, which you, sir, may call pride, as to presume they 
might (like the works of Homer ere they were joyned 
together and made a volume by the Athenian king) be 
sung at village-feasts ; though not to monarchs after vic- 
tory, nor to armies before battle. For so (as an inspira- 
tion of glory into the one, and of valour into the other) 
did Homer's spirit, long after his body's rest, wander in 
music about Greece." Hobbes, by the way, acknowledged 
this statement by assuring Davenant that "but for the 
clamour of the multitude, that hide their envy of the 
present under a reverence of antiquity, I should say fur- 
ther that it would last as long as the Iliad or the ^neid." 
When all is said, we find a precedent for the use of this 
measure in Sir John Davies's "Nosce Teipsum" (1599), 
although in this older poem the sense runs over from one 
stanza into a second or third. Wyatt had also employed 
it in his poem, "The Lover Describeth his being taken 
with Sight of his Love," as had the Earl of Oxford 
in 1576, in a poem prefixed to Bedingfield's Cardanus. 
Dryden made use of it in his stanzas on the " Death of 
Oliver Cromwell" (1658), and, after also trying the coup- 
let, in his "Annus Mirabilis " (1666). After that time, 
however, he kept to the couplet, save, of course, in his 

2* 



34 English Literature. 

odes. So that Waller had the satisfaction of living to 
see the measures that he introduced become the prevail- 
ing form. 

V. I have to this point tried to give a sketch of the 
change in the poetical forms, and to show the different 
steps in this change. The question now suggests itself : 
Why was the change made ? In what way was it possi- 
ble that the age should be deaf to the majesty of Milton's 
line and prefer Cowley, Waller, and the playwrights ? 
But when could Milton be a popular poet ? Even now, 
when his place is secured among the greatest of writers, 
we read him, if we read him at all, at some time from a 
sense of duty, and then most of us return to hir^ only fit- 
fully, as indeed we do to most great writers. And then, 
when Milton wrote his finest poems, he was the lonely 
singer of a fallen cause, and Puritanism meant to his con- 
temporaries a narrow theology, a bigoted view of human 
life, and the unsoundest political principles. We see that 
Milton was one of the last of the great poets, and that he 
was great because, with his magnificent poetical equip- 
ment, he represented a great principle of national life ; and 
this has always been part of the inspiration of the greatest 
poets. Homer is the poet of remote antiquity ; ^schylus 
and Sophocles of Greece in her prime ; Vergil, of imperial 
Rome ; Dante, of the Middle Ages ; Chaucer, of awakening 
England ; Shakspere of England in a time of vigor and 
enthusiasm ; Milton, of Puritanism ; Goethe, of Germany ; 
and — it seems to me — it is their quality as representatives 
which so much outweighs literary performance of no mat- 
ter what degree of excellence. Puritanism was inspired by 
some of the most marked traits of the English character, 
and Milton brought to its service very complete training. 
Puritanism flourished and died, though it made a deep 
mark on both England and America, and left Bunyan's 



English Literature. 35 

prose * and Milton's poetry to show how important a part 
it had played in English history ; and it showed, too, in 
Milton's faults how narrowing it was. 

Milton's fame was something which depended a good 
deal on politics. After 1688 the Liberals admired him, 

* It would be interesting to study the gradual growth of Bunyan's fame 
in the last two hundred years. The popularity of the " Pilgrim's Progress" 
was always acknowledged, but it was frequently spoken of as a book suit- 
able only for the populace. Dr. Young, " Sat." V. iii. li*?, speaking of a 
newly married couple ; 

" With the fourth sun a warm dispute arose 
On Durfey's poesy and Bunyan's prose." 
D'Urfey's poetry was notoriously beneath contempt. 

John Dunton (for whom vide infra\ in a talk with the librarian of Har- 
vard College, said, " Nor must I omit amongst these great names [Tillot- 
son, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Mrs. Katharine Phillips, Mrs. Behn — for Dun- 
ton's taste was catholic-— and Mrs. Rowe], to mention that of Mr. John Bun- 
yan, who, though a man of very ordinary education, yet was a man of great 
natural parts, and as well known for an author throughout England as any 
I have mentioned, by the many books he has published, of which the ' Pil- 
grim's Progress' bears away the bell" (^vide his "Letters from New Eng- 
land" (Boston, ISe'Z), p. 159). 

Swift, in "A Letter to a Young Clergyman :" " I have been better enter- 
tained, and more informed, by a few pages in the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' 
than by a long discourse on the will and the intellect, and simple or com- 
plex ideas." 

Sterne, " Tristram Shandy," i. chap. iv. : " My life and opinions . . . will 
... be no less read than the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' itself." 

Vide Knox, "Essays," No. 9 '2 : "Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' has 
given as much pleasure among the Enghsh vulgar as the 'Quixote' of 
Cervantes." ' 

Dr. Johnson said it was the only uninspired book, except " Don Quixote," 
which the reader ever wished were longer. 

Cowper apologizes for referring to him : 

" I name thee not lest so despised a name, 
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame." — Tirocinium. 

It is only in this century, since the Romantic revival, that the prejudice 
against its simplicity and mediaeval origin has been removed, 



36 English Literature. 

and even a hundred years later Johnson, who was a hot 
Torv, attacked him in his " Lives of the Poets." * Of Mil- 
ton's influence we shall have occasion to speak later. We 
can, to be sure, find compliments to him in some of the 
writings of the time of the Restoration, but most of the 
authors neglected him, although I fancy that his popular- 
ity in this country among people of moderate taste in poe- 
try proves that in England he was read by the survivors 
of the Puritans. Then, too, his harmonious rhythm in- 
spired, as we shall see, a great deal of tumid blank verse. 
The real interest of the nation went with its contemporary 
writers, and in the race for popularity modernness is alM^ays 
tolerably sure to outrun antiquity, and Milton soon appeared 
like a stranded classic. The edition of 1688, the publication 
of which was almost a political move, did much to redeem 
the neglect from which Milton's fame had been suffering. 

Even now we are repelled by the tedious theology and 
the classical form of the " Paradise Lost." How must they 
have seemed when the modern spirit had the additional 
charm of novelty ? 

The Elizabethan poets wrote under the inspiration of a 
strong feeling. As this decayed, men sought first to 
make it good by fierce language. Take, for example, these 
lines from Davenant's "Albovine," as a specimen of the 
hero's method of courtship : 

" Fill me a bowl with negro's blood, congealed 
Even into livers ! Tell her, Hermegild, 
I'll swallow tar to celebrate her health." 

Evidently language of this sort contains signs of decay, 

* The political bias was long-lived. Clough, writing from Oxford, in 
1838, says : " It is difficult here even to obtain assent to Milton's greatness 
as a poet. . . . Were it not for the happy notion that a man's poetry is not 
at all affected by his opinions, ... I fear the ' Paradise Lost ' would be 
utterly unsalable, except for waste paper in the university " (i. 80). 



English Literature. 37 

and must soon give place to something different. The 
courtiers, who could endure declamation of that sort, said 
that Milton's harmonies sounded like the rumbling of a 
wheelbarrow ;* they were equally deaf to the charm of the 
old lyrics, and put into short lines a vast number of feeble 
sentiments. The songs of the Restoration ask for but 
little attention. We may find in Waller a few excellent 
lyrics, as well as such poems as " The Lady who can Sleep 
when she Pleases," " Of a Tree Cut in Paper ;" in Roscom- 
mon, lines " On the Death of a Lady's Dog," \ and a " Song 
on a Young Lady who Sung Finely, and was Afraid of 
a Cold." Rochester, too, wrote some verses which are 
marked with some slight ingenuity, but since we are now 
following mainly the broader streams of literature, we may 
leave for the present this side-current. 

The brief examination that we have given will be suffi- 
cient to show us that the outlook for literature after the 
Restoration was a very dreary one. We have but touched 
upon the drama, but outside of that we have seen the 
decadence of the greatest inspiration, the neglect of real 
genius, and the appearance of a prosaic period. The prob- 
lem that lay before the writers of that day was a compli- 
cated one. Literature, as I have tried to point out, had 
broken loose from the people, and had to seek support from 
the court until a public of readers should be found — or, 
rather, should be made. A proper understanding of the 
absence of a reading public is necessary for understanding 
the literature of the last century. 

* Vide Johnson's " Life of J. Philips." 

t Yet when shall we find anything new ? Joseph Hall says in his " Sat- 
ires" (1598): 

" Should Bandel's throstle die without a song? 

Or Adamantius, my dog, be laid along, 
Down in some ditch without his exequies, 
Or epitaphs, or mournful elegies ?" 



38 English Liter atttre. 



CHAPTER 11. 

I, It is of the utmost importance that we understand 
clearly how few were the readers in the latter half of the 
sixteenth century, how small was the public to which 
authors could address themselves. The Bible and Bun- 
yan were doubtless widely read; probably Milton's "Para- 
dise Lost " was read by the same people, but this new 
literature was far removed from the populace. There was 
but little literary interest. Books could not be printed 
without a license, and then only by one of the legal print- 
ers, and of these there were but twenty — master-printers, 
that is ; and in 1666 there were only 140 working-printers. 
Moreover, the great fire in London, in that year, destroyed 
a large number of books. Again, there are statistics to 
illustrate this : between 1666 and (after the fire) June 12, 
1680, there were published 3550 books. Of these, 947 
treated of theology, the larger number probably being 
sermons and j^amphlets ; 420 of law, and 153 of medicine, 
two fifths thus being special, technical books ; 397 were 
educational books, 253 on geography and navigation, in- 
ckiding maps. The number of books of all kinds would 
then average about 250 a year ; but, deducting reprints, 
pamphlets, tracts, sermons, maps, etc., we may estimate the 
number, according to Charles Knight,* as less than a hun- 
dred a year, and only a few of these belonged to what we 

* Quoted by Beljame, " Le Public et Ics Homines de Lettre?." 



English Literature. 39 

may call literature. As Dr. Johnson said in his " Life of 
Milton," " the call for books was not in Milton's age what 
it is at present. To read was not then a general amusement; 
neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves 
disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired 
to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of 
knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed learning were 
not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle 
race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, 
and who buy the numerous products of modern typogra- 
phy, the number was then comparatively small." 

And it was small, probably, in comparison with the num- 
bers of those who were busy readers in the beginning of 
the century and in the latter half of the previous one. 
Then every man began to translate from the classic au- 
thors, or to rewrite classic stories. Shakspere's "Venus 
and Adonis" (1593) was but one instance of this. There 
were Chapman's "Homer" ("Iliad," 1611; "Odyssey," 
1615); Marston's " Pygmalion's Image " (1597); Marlowe's 
"Hero and Leander" (1598), and his "Elegies of Ovid" 
(1597); Golding's " Metamorphoses " (1565), and Sandys's 
version of the same (1626). In 1565, Horace's first two 
Satires were translated by Thomas Colwell ; in the next 
year, two books of the Satires were "Englyshed" by 
Thomas Drant. A few of the " Odes " in 1621, by John 
Ashman, and the whole in 1625 by Sir Thomas Hawkins. 
There was Gavin Douglas's translation of " Vergil," fin- 
ished in 1513 ; Surrey's (2d and 4th books), published in 
1553;* Phaer's and Twyne's (1558-73); Stanihurst's 
(1583); Fleming's " Georgics and Bucolics" (1589), in 
blank verse ; and then Dryden's (1697). The list is a long 

* The first English blank verse, doubtless written in imitation of that 
of the Italians, Felice Feliguei, and Tiissino, whose "Italia Liberata" 
(vide infra) appeared in 1548. 



40 English Litei'ature. 

one, but the whole number of books published then on all 
subjects was considerable, and at that time the proportion 
of poems and books about literature was great. As I have 
said, this enthusiasm for the classics had a great share in 
inspiring the writers for the stage, and the drama was 
something of popular interest. But the great bulk of the 
English people drew inspiration from the Bible. The clas- 
sics became the property of the learned alone, while Puri- 
tanism grew narrower. We may see its course illustrated 
by what we know of Milton's life. He was brought up 
amid all the riches of literature ; he studied foreign lan- 
guages and foreign literatures. His father composed music, 
and Milton was interested in the art ; and he brought to the 
service of Puritanism the flower of the cultivation which 
was produced by the Renaissance, and published his great- 
est works after Puritanism had lost its power. He was a 
sort of living anachronism. He belonged to one age, which 
he survived ; and he had been trained in an earlier one. His 
education was unpuritan, and his poem was built on the 
inspiration of the ancients, yet it appeared in the begin- 
ning of what we take to be modern times. Not only had 
the indirect influence of Puritanism been unfavorable to 
literature ; the Civil Wars and Cromwell's rule had really 
produced a sort of interregnum of about eighteen years, 
during which poetry and the drama were neglected and 
nothing flourished but polemical writing, so that Milton 
stands out in especial prominence as the sole transmitter 
of earlier traditions. 

Various facts have been collected to prove the general 
lack of education. Milton's eldest daughter did not know 
how to write ; at least, she put a cross where her signa- 
ture should be. The spelling of Dryden's wife — a lady 
of noble family — is a sort of unconscious prophecy of the 
spelling reform. Booksellers, naturally, did not flourish 



English Literature. 41 

at this time. In the " Life of the Honourable and Rever- 
end Dr. John North"* (p. 241 et seq.), we find a com- 
parison between the condition of booksellers in 1666 and 
1683. At the earlier time, "the shops were spacious and 
the learned gladly resorted to them, w^here they seldom 
failed to meet with agreeable conversation. And the book- 
sellers themselves were knowing and conversible men, with 
whom, for the sake of bookish knowledge, the greatest 
Wits were pleased to converse. . . . But now this Empo- 
rium is vanished and the Trade contracted into the Hands 
of two or three Persons, who to make good their Monop- 
oly, ransack, not only the Neighbours of the Trade that 
are scattered about Town, but all over England, aye, and 
beyond Sea too, and send abroad their Circulators, and in 
that Manner get into their hands all that is valuable. The 
rest of the Trade are content to take their Refuse. . . 
And it is wretched to consider what pickpocket work, with 
Help of the Press, these Demi-booksellers make. They 
crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep 
hirelings in garrets, on hard meat, to write and correct by 
the grate ; so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness," 
etc., etc. In these distressing circumstances, editions were 
small, and the prices paid authors low. There were not 
more than 1500 copies in each edition of Milton, and 1300 
copies were sold in two years, the author receiving £5 
down, and five more when 1300 were sold {mde Johnson's 
"Life of Milton"). Doubtless this was a large sale for 
the time, for, although the poem did not please the court, 
it evidently found readers elsewhere. And pleasing the 
court was far from meaning that the writer was rewarded. 
Butler's " Hudibras " was entirely in the interest of the 
king and his party, and when the first three cantos ap- 

* Quoted by Beljame. 



42 English Literahtre. 

peared, at the end of 1662, Lord Buckliurst made it known 
to the court, and every one was laughing over the story 
of the Presbyterian justice who endeavored to put down 
superstition and correct current abuses : the curious mix- 
ture of a knight-errant and a pedantic magistrate — a Pres- 
byterian Don Quixote. The king read it, and it became 
the fashion of the day. Pepys (Dec. 26, 1662) says : 
" Hither came Mr. Battersby ; and we falling into dis- 
course of a new book of drollery in use, called 'Hudi- 
bras,' I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the 
Temple : cost me 2s. Qd. But when I come to read it, it 
is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the 
warrs, that I am ashamed of it ; and by and by meeting 
at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18c?." 
On the 6th of February, however, he bought it again : " it 
being certainly some ill-humour to be so against that which 
all the world cries up to be the example of wit ; for which 
I am resolved once more to read him and see whether I 
can find it or no." Another entry, December 10 of the 
same year, 1663, mentions a visit to a bookseller's, when, 
by the way, he " could not tell whether to lay out my 
money for books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature 
was most earnest in ; but at last " (and this list is certainly 
curious), "after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's 'History of 
Paul's,' Stow's ' London,' Gesner, ' History of Trent,' be- 
sides Shakespeare, Jonson and Beaumont's plays, I at last 
chose Dr. Fuller's ' Worthies,' the ' Cabbala, or Collection 
of Letters of State, etc., etc.,' and ' Hudibras,' both parts, 
the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I 
cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." In gen- 
eral, as Pepys shows, the contrary opinion was held. 
Every one looked on Butler's fortune as made. As Dr. 
Johnson puts it, "Every eye watched for the golden 
shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly 



English Literature. 43 

was not without his part in the general expectation." 
Nothing came of it. The golden shower was as decep- 
tive as a gold-mine, and Butler took up his pen again. 
The second part appeared, and Dr. Johnson repeats a story 
of how the Duke of Buckingham was told by Wycherley 
that Butler deserved well of the royal family, and " that 
it was a reproach to the court that a person of his loyalty 
and wit should suffer in obscurity and under the wants he 
did." The duke was ready with his promises, and offered 
to let the poet be introduced to him. While he was wait- 
ing to receive the poet, " a brace of ladies " passed by the 
open door, and the duke slipped out, and Butler never saw 
him. As Colley Gibber said of him,* " Was not his book 
always in the pocket of his prince ? And what did the 
mighty prowess of his knight-errant amount to ? Why f — 
he died, with the highest esteem of the court — in a garret!" 
Cowley was promised by Charles I. and Charles II. the 
mastership of the Savoy — ^an old hospital for the recep- 
tion of professional beggars — but the sinecure was never 
granted him, and he died in neglect. 

Writing for the stage was not very satisfactory, although 
it was tried by nearly all the writers of the time. Dry- 
den, who probably was paid as much as any one, received, 
apparently, about £100 a year, and never more than £100 
for any one of his plays. The prologues and epilogues 
would bring him, perhaps, five guineas more. For a time 
Dryden received from £-300 to £400 in return for writ- 
ing three plays a year — and that is the equivalent of three 
times as much at the present time — and he had pensions 
from the king, but the reward was scanty and uncertain 
for the rest of the dramatic writers. They all had to de- 
pend for further support upon such gifts as they might 

* In his dedication of his " Xiraena " to Steele. 
f Proctor calls this use of why an Americanism. 



44 English Literature. 

entice from the rich by complimentary addresses, odes, 
elegies,* dedications, etc. In a word, there was no public. 
The history of English literature for the next hundred 
years is an account of the growth of a reading public. 

At some other time we shall discuss briefly some of the 
peculiarities of the stage. Of certain qualities of the poe- 
try mention has been already made, such as the invasion 
of conceits : the later j^oets were satisfied with the inge- 
nuity and novelty of the conceits alone ; they looked upon 
the means as an end, just as, possibly, some of our con- 
temj^orary verse-writers mistake the use of new and rare 
ef)ithets as all that is required for poetry. The reaction 
was in favor of simplicity and correctness. It began, as 
we saw, in Denham and Waller, who are to some extent 
the English equivalents of Malherbe, but Dryden was the 
man who left his mark most distinctly upon the move- 
ment, until we come to Pope, who brought it to its high- 
est condition. 

II. Possibly the most characteristic form of the poetry 
of this time is the satirical. There was an absence of strong 
enthusiasm, and in its place there existed political heat, 
and, above all, an earnest desire for correctness. The 
wide-spread licentiousness of the age produced the cyni- 
cism which would take pleasure in the study of the faults 
of mankind rather than in imaginative representations of 
human excellence. Moreover, the new-born intellectual 
and scientific interest demanded what was thought to be 
accuracy. It must be remembered, however, that satire 
was not absolutely new in English verse. There was 
George Gascoigne's "Steele Glas," 1576, one of the early 
poems in blank verse, by the way, from which it may be 
allowable to quote a few lines (p. 78) : 

* Dryden received 500 guineas for his elegy, *' Eleonora," on the Countess 
of Abingdon, 



English Literature. 45 

" Now these be past, (iny priests) yet shall you pray 
For common people each in his degree, 
That God vouchsafe to grant them all his grace. 
When should I now begin to bid my beads ? 
Or who shall first be put in common place ? 
My wits be weary and my eyes are dim, 
I cannot see who best deserves the room. 
Stand forth, good Piers, thou plowman by thy name, 
Yet so, the sailor saith I do him wrong : 
That one contends his pains are Avithout peer, 
That other saith that none be like to his ; 
Indeed they labour both exceedingly. 
But since I see no shipman that can live 
Without the plough, and yet I many see 
(Which live by land) that never saw the seas : ' 
Therefore, I say, stand forth Piers Plowman first 
Thou winnest the room, by very worthyness. 

Behold him, priests, and though he stink of sweat, 
Disdain him not : for shall I tell you what ? 
Such climb to heaven, before the shaven crowns. 
But how ? forsooth with true humility. 
Not that they hoard their grain when it is cheap. 
Nor that they kill the calf to have the milk. 
Nor that they set debate between their lords," 

and commit various agrarian outrages. 

" I say that sooner some of them 
Shall scale the walls which lead us up to heaven 
Than corn-fed beasts, whose belly is their God 
Although they preach of more perfection." 

The priests are also to pray for sailors — 

" God them send 
More mind of him whenas they come to land — 
For toward shipwreck many men can pray." 

****** 
But here, methinks, my priests begin to frown, 

****** 
And one I hear more saucy than the rest 
Which asketh me, when shall our prayers end ?" 



46 English Literature. 

To this he answers : 

" When tinkers make no more holes than they found, 

****** 
When colliers put no dust into their sacks, 

****** 
When smiths shoe horses as they would be shod, 

****** 
When brewers put no baggage in their beer. 

****** 
When silver sticks not on the teller's fingers. 
And when receivers pay as they receive, 
When all these folk have quite forgotten fraud." 

He ends the poem thus : 

" And yet therein I pray you (my good priests) 
Pray still for me, and for my Glass of Steel 
That it (nor I) do any mind offend. 
Because we show all colours in their kind. 
And pray for me that (since my hap is such 
To see men so) I may perceive myself. 
worthy words to end my worthless verse. 
Pray for me, priests, I pray you pray for me," 

But these pensive lines are very different from the usual 
somewhat brazen rhetoric of the regular satirical poets of 
England. The first* of these was Joseph Hall (1574- 
1656), afterwards Bishop of Exeter and of Norwich. At 
the age of twenty-three, and while he was yet a student at 
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the author began the pub- 
lication of his Satires, the first three books appearing in 
1597, the last three in 1598, a little more than twenty 
years after Gascoigne's " Steele Glas." 

" I first adventure," is the way he begins : 

* The controversy about absolute priointy would be sterile. Grosart, in 
the preface to his edition of Hall's satires, rules out Piers Plowman as a 
mediaeval writer, and mentions, besides Gascoigne, Hake's " Newes out of 
Powles Church Yard," 1567-69, and Thomas Lodge's "Fig for Momus," 
1595. What Hall meant was that he was tlie first classical satirist. 



English Literature. 47 

" I first adventure, with fool-hardy might, 
To tread the steps of perilous despite. 
I first adventure, follow me who list, 

And be the second English satirist. 

****** 
Go, daring muse, on with thy thankless task, 
And do the ugly face of Vice unmask." 

And this he did with the vigor he learned from Juvenal 
and the " Roman ancients " — " Whose words," he says, 

" were short, and darksome was their sense. 
Who reads one line of their harsh poesies, 
Thrice must he take his wind, and breathe him thrice." 

Here is an example : 

<« Thy grandsire's words savoured of thrifty leeks 
Or manly garlic. 

They naked went, or clad in ruder hide 
Or home-spun russet, void of foreign pride. 
But thou canst sport in garish gauderie, 
To suit a fool's far-fetched livery. 
A French head joined to neck Italian : 
The thighs from Germany, the breast from Spain : 
An Englishman in none, a fool in all." 

This reminds one of Portia's description of the English 
lord, "Merchant of Venice," I. i. 79 (1596-7). 

He attacks Marlowe, and, in fact, most of his contem- 
poraries : 

" Too popular is tragic poesie. 
Straining his tiptoes for a farthing fee. 
And doth, beside, on rimeless numbers tread : 
Unbid iambics flow from careless head." 

He also denounces various social errors : 

" Who ever gives a pair of velvet shoes 
To th' holy rood, or liberally allows 
But a new rope to ring the curfew bell, 
But he desires that his great deed may dwell 
Or graven in the chancel-window glass. 
Or in the lasting tomb of plated brass. 



48 English Literature. 

Some stately tomb he builds, Egyptian wise, 
Rex regnm written on the pyrarais : 
Whereas great Arthur lives in ruder oak, 
That never felt aught but the feller's stroke, 
Small honor can be got with gaudy grave, 
A rotten name from death it cannot save. 
The fairer tomb, the fouler is thy name, 
The greater pomp procuring greater shame. 
Thy monument make thou thy living deeds, 
No other tomb than that true virtue needs !" 

Sat. ii. lib. iii. 

We cannot linger long over these poems. They were, 
perhaps, the first attempts in English at adapting ancient 
poetry to modern times ; a habit which was forgotten, 
and revived by Rochester in the time of Charles II. It 
ran through the last century. Hall by no means invent- 
ed the notion of this sort of satirical writing, although 
he was a contemporary of the French manipulators of 
Juvenal, D'Aubigne (1550-1630) and Regnier (1573- 
1613) ; he had read but Ariosto's satires and "one base 
French satire," * which had inspired him, or helped to 

* Vide the postscript to his satires : " Besides the plain experience there- 
of in the satires of Ariosto (save which and one base French satire) I could 
never attain the view of any for my direction." He probably refers to 
one of the satyr-like French poems of the early part of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, such as adorn " Le Parnasse Satyrique." 

The satires of Ariosto and of Alamanni were doubtless Wyatt's model ; 
thus : 

*' This [independence] is the cause that I could never yet 

Hang on their sleeves that weigh, as thou may'st see, 

A chip of chance more than a pound of wit. 

This maketh me at home to hunt and hawk ; 

And in foul weather at my book to sit ; 

In frost and snow, then with my bow to stalk ; 

No man doth mark whereso I ride or go. 

In lusty leas at liberty I walk ; 

And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe." . . . 



English Literature. 40 

inspire him, with the notion of modernizing Juvenal. Ari- 
osto's satires are certainly not bitter portrayals of the dark 
side of life in Italy — for he had a field which would have 
delighted Juvenal ; they lack that writer's tremendous 
earnestness ; they are epistles, and are more like Horace's 
descriptions of what he saw. That there should have 
been a similarity of methods among the writers of the 
Renaissance in modern Europe is not strange in view of 
the fact that light came to them from but one quarter — 
namely, from antiquity. Italy was the first to study the 
classics, and the first to try the experiments which all the 
rest of civilized Europe tried in turn. 

About Hall I will only add that Milton, who had a con- 
troversy with him, denounced his "hobbling distick," as he 
called it, in his "Apology for Smectymnuus;"* that Hall 
sank into obscurity until Pope's time, who wished that he 
had modernized him, as he did modernize some of Donne's 
satires, and that he was much admired by Gray. I think, 
however, that now those who turn back to him feel as if 
he was more impressed by a desire to conform to Juvenal 
than to the facts, and that he would not have been so in- 
dignant if the Roman poet had not shown him the way. 
Donne's satires are very different. He wrote them when 
but twenty, and they seem to be very genuine expressions 
of real feeling. Here is one passage ; 

" Fool and wretch, wilt thou let Soul be tied 
To men's laws, by which she shall not be tried 



« « 



Neither had I read the hobbling distick which he means. For this 
good hap I had from a careful education to be inured and seasoned be- 
times with the best and elegantest authors of the learned tongues and 
thereto brought an ear that could measure a just cadence and scan with- 
out^ articulating ; rather nice and humorous in what was tolerable then 
patient to read every drawling versifier." 

3 



50 English Literature. 

At the last day ? Oh, will it then serve thee 

To say a Philip or a Gregory, 

A Harry or a Martin taught thee this ? 

Is not this excuse for mere contraries, 

Equally strong ? Cannot both sides say so ? 

That thou may'st rightly obey Power, her bounds know." 

After the Restoration satire naturally had abundance of 
material. Marvell denounced the vices of the court, and, 
as I have said, Butler jeered at the Puritans. I think that 
most of us agree with Pepys, and find " Hudibras " tedi- 
ous, for, as Dr. Johnson said, " Our grandfathers knew 
the picture from the life ; we judge of the life from the 
picture," but there are enough clever couplets in Butler 
to keep his name fresh : 

" The greatest saints and sinners have been made 
Of proselytes of one another's trade." 

" The subtler all things are 
They're but to nothing the more near." 

" Those that write in rhyme still make 
The one verse for the other's sake." 

These survive, while "Hudibras" is practically unread. 
Cleveland (1613-59), too, was never tired of ridiculing the 
Puritans, whom, for instance, he thus destribes: 

" With face and fashion to be known 
For one of sure election, 
With eyes all white and many a groan, 
With neck aside to draw in tone, 
With harp in's nose, or he is none. 
See a new teacher of the town, 
0, the town, the town's new teacher " — 

and Cleveland's poems doubtless gave hints to Butler. 
Butler, too, by no means satirized the Puritans alone : bad 
poets ; the Royal Society ; critics, of course ; the age of 
Charles 11, ; marriage; plagiaries — all came in for his 
clever ridicule in other short poems. But although many 



English Literature. t\ 

of Butler's lines have become proverbial, and bis wit is as 
epigrammatic as that of Pope, he failed to attain a really 
high position, because he was unable to see anything but ' 
what was contemptible in the Puritans. As Mr. Stopford 
Brooke says : " Satire should have at least the semblance 
of truth ; yet Butler calls the Puritans cowards." And 
readers know that perpetual epigrams become in time as 
wearisome as perpetual punning. 

III. Satire, then, was the weapon which, so to speak, 
ruder craftsmen had been forging, and Dry den was about 
to polish for the consternation of his foes. In his early 
days he was a busy writer for the stage, but of the drama, 
and of his contribution to it, we shall speak at another 
time. His satirical poems, at least certain parts of them, 
are what have made him famous and will keep him fa- 
mous. Had he died at the age of forty, we should have 
known him as, all things considered, a clever dramatist and 
an intelligent critic, whose prefaces and brief prose writ- 
ings were worthy of attention. Davenant had been poet- 
laureate to Charles I., and was reappointed to the same 
position by Charles II. ; at his death it must have seemed 
that Butler was the proper man to succeed him, but Dry- 
den was appointed. His first great work was ''Absalom 
and Achitophel," published in November, 1681. And it 
is with this poem that Dryden first showed how formida- 
ble an antagonist he was. Dryden wrote to defend the 
king. Moreover, he had an opportunity, which he did not 
neglect, of paying off some of his own personal scores, one, 
of long standing, being an account with the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, who had ridiculed him, with more success than 
lasting wit, in the "Rehearsal." There were others, too, 
who came in for incidental notice, yet these debts he paid 
without any exhibition of the malice that would have 
taken the sting from his lash. 



52 English Literature. 

He describes Shaftesbury thus : 

" Of these the false Achitophel was first ; 
A name to all succeeding ages cursed : 
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit ; 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place ; 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace : 
A fiery soul, which working out its way, 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay. 
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity ; 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high 
He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit ! 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. 
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, 
Where none can sin against the people's will ! 
Where crowds can Avink, and no offence be known, 
Since in another's guilt they find their own ! 
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge ; 
The statesman w^e abhor, but praise the judge. 
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin 
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean, 
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress ; 
Swift of despatch, and easy of access. 
Oh ! had he been content to serve the crown, 
With virtues only proper to the gown ; 
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed 
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed ; 
David for him his tuneful harp had strung, 
And heaven had wanted one immortal song. 
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, 
And fortune's ice prefers, not virtue's land." 

Every one will notice the evident truthfulness of this 
compact description, and the absence of personal feeling ; 
merits which are always rare in controversial writing, and 
especially rare at this time. And it is equally impossible 



English Literature. 53 

to overlook the unprecedented ease and grace with which 
the heroic measure is handled. Notice this passage, too, 
in which Buckingham is described : 

" Some of their chiefs were princes of the land ; 
In the first ranic of these did Zimri stand ; 
A man so various that he seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
StifE in opinion, always in the wrong ; 
Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
But in the course of one revolving moon. 
Was chyraist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon : 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
Blest madman, that could every hour employ, 
With something new to wish, or to enjoy : 
Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : 
So over violent, or over civil, 
That every man with him was God or Devil. 
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art : 
Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late, 
He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
He laughed himself from coui't ; then sought relief 
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief : 
For spite of him, the weight of business fell 
On Absalom and wise Achitophel ; 
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
He left not faction, but of that was left." 

Here is the same unexaggerated description, this time 
of a flimsy character, and it is easy to imagine the force 
with which the poem must have impressed itself upon its 
readers. As for the mere sound, the above may be com- 
pared with these lines of Rochester's : 

" Well, sir, 'tis granted : I said Dryden's rhymes 
Were stolen, unequal — nay dull, many times. 
What foolish patron is there found of his 
So blindly partial to deny me this ? 



54 Enylish Literature. 

But that his plays embroidered up and down 

With wit and learning, justly pleased the town, 

In the same paper I as freely own. 

Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass 

That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass." 

Or these from Oldham (1653-83) (from a satire in which 
Spenser is dissuading Oldham from poetry) : 

" I come, fond Idiot, ere it be too late, 
Kindly to warn thee of thy wretched fate : 
Take heed betimes, repent and learn of me 
To shun the dang'rous rocks of Poetry : 
Had I the choice of Flesh and Blood again, 
To act once more in Life's tumultuous scene ; 
I'd be a Porter or a Scavenger, 
A Groom, or anything but a Poet here : 
Hast thou observed some Hawker of the Town, 
Cries Matches, Small coal, Brooms, Old shoes and boots, 
Socks, Sermons, Ballads, Lies, Gazettes, and Votes ? 
So unrecorded to the grave I'd go." . . . 

Surely Dryden's superior management of the heroic 
verse is evident at once. And it is to be noticed that he 
does not confine himself to what Mr. Lowell calls the 
" thought coop " of the couplet. The sense runs through 
from one line to another. Yet he did this without awk- 
wardness. Another quality that he had was that of rea- 
soning in verse, of making statements or arguments as 
clear as his own prose— and that is saying a good deal. 

This Dryden did without the fierce fury of most of the 
satirists, a quality which they copied from Juvenal, just as 
they imitated his obscurity and that of Persius. He wrote, 
too, with complete self-possession, a sort of lordly superi- 
ority to personal pique, as when he speaks of one Samuel 
Johnson as Ben-Jochanan : 

" A Jew of humble parentage was he, 
By trade a Levite though of low degree : 



English Literature, 55 

His pride no higher than the desk aspired. 
But for the drudgery of priests was hired 
To read and pray in linen ephod brave, 
And pick up single shekels from the grave. 
Married at last, but finding charge come faster, 
He could not live by God, but changed his master, 
Inspired by want, was made a factious tool ; 
They got a villain, and we lost a fool." 

Or Ms cool reference to Pordage :* 

"Lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's son." 

In 1681 appeared " The Medal," a satire against sedition; 
a medal having been struck off to celebrate Shaftesbury's 
acquittal of the charge of high-treason. 

Let us consider for a moment the circumstances in which 
these poems were read. In the city there were numberless 
coffee-houses, which were frequented by men of all sorts 
for the discussion of political, social, and literary news ; 
but in the country there were but few opportunities of 
knowing what was going on. The gazettes published only 
what the licensers of the press allowed, and they naturally 
did not contain much of the talk of the town. The curi- 
osity of the provinces was allayed, however, by men who 
made a business of writing news-letters to certain persons 
of the nobility, clergymen, magistrates, or what not. The 
writers wandered through the town, picking up scraps -of 
news for their correspondents. Their method may be 
learned from No. 625 of the Spectator, in which a writer 
says : " In order to make myself useful, I am early in the 

* Pordage's father had been expelled his charge for insufficiency. One 
count in the accusation brought against him was this : *' That a great 
dragon came into his chamber with a tail of eight yards long, four great 
teeth, and did spit fire at him ; and that he contended with him ;" vide 
Scott's " Life of Dryden," chap. v. Apparently it was not thought etiquette 
to contend with dragons. 



56 Engllah Literature. 

antichamber, where I thrust my head into the thick of the 
press, and catch the news, at the opening of the door, while 
it is warm. Sometimes I stand by the beefeaters, and take 
the buzz as it passes by me. At other times I lay my ear 
close to the wall, and suck in many a valuable whisper, as it 
runs in a straight line from corner to corner. When I am 
weary of standing, I repair to one of the neighbouring cof- 
fee-houses, . . . and forestall the evening post by two hours. 
There is a certain gentleman who hath given me the slip. 
. . . But I have played him a trick. I have purchased a 
pair of the best coach-horses I could buy for money, and 
now let him outstrip me if he can." Thus we see that the 
energy of reporters is not an invention of the nineteenth 
century. 

The poorer people of the country received their infor- 
mation of what was going on in the city from the clergy- 
man, with such comments, words of explanation, warning, 
and advice as they thought proper ; and, since the clergy 
belonged to the king's party, they doubtless took every 
precaution to disseminate what they deemed sound views. 

As to the dissenters, they were the great readers of ser- 
mons and tracts, and how numerous these were may be 
gathered from the list at the beginning of this chapter. 
Preaching was generally forbidden them, and the songs of 
the time are full of ribald abuse of their conventicles, as 
their secret reunions were called. They were exposed to 
severe persecution. Pepys, August 7, 1664, says : "I saw 
several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being 
at a conventicle. They go like lambs, without any resist- 
ance. I would to God," he adds, " they would either con- 
form, or be more wise and not be catched." Of their 
sufferings it is easy to judge from reading any life of 
Bunyan. Being debarred from preaching, they took to 
writing, and there are many proofs of their literary activ- 



English Literature. 5/ 

ity. By the side of the Pindaric odes, the translations, 
the ribald plays, the fierce satires of the reign of Charles 
II., there were appearing a host of religious publications, 
of which the best known, because the best in every way, 
was Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," * which went through 
eight editions in four years. 

Dryden was peculiarly happy in choosing his method of 
attack. Nowadays, practised readers are weary of fables 
and allegories ; but these always have a charm for children, 
and for inexperienced readers, who need this sugaring of 
the pill, or, as Addison put it {Spectator, No. 512) : "This 
natural pride and ambition of the soul is very niuch grati- 
fied in the reading of a fable ; for in writings of this kind 
the reader comes in for half of the performance, everything 
appears to him like a discovery of his own. . . . For this 
reason the " Absalom and Achitophel" was one of the most 
popular poems that ever appeared in English." Then a bib- 
lical allegory was most fortunate. Dryden stole the very 
thunder of the Puritans : Zimri, Shimei, Ishbosheth, Jebu- 
sites, Barzillai — these names alone would have sanctified 
any writing. 

Not only, however, was it customary to transfer current 
themes to a biblical setting, as indeed had been done in 
" Samson Agonistes "—for the translation of the Bible had 
brought about a change something like that of the Renais- 
sance — but the very names of the poem had been applied 



* For the origin of this book, see " The Ancient Poem of Guillaume 
de Guileville, entitled Le Pelerinage de THomme, compared with the 
Pilo-rira's Progress of John Bunyan. Edited from Notes collected by the 
late Mr. Nathaniel Hill. London : Basil Montague Pickering. 1858." It 
is much' to be regretted that the editor did not publish the notes in full. 
Cf. prefaces of Southey and James Montgomery to their editions of this 
book, and the interesting but uncritical remarks of George Offor in his re- 
print, London, 184*7. 

3* 



58 English Literature. 

as they were here. There was, for instance, a play pub- 
lished in 1680, "Absalom's Conspiracy ; or, the Tragedy 
of Treason," * in which Monmouth had Been compared to 
Absalom. 

While in this satire Dryden held his hand, and by his 
reasonableness disarmed opposition, he was not always gen- 
tle with stupidity. In the second part, as it is called, of 
" Absalom and Achitophel," after many replies from vari- 
ous Whig poets, he reserved some of the writers for his 
own castigation : as in the line about Pordage, and the 
celebrated attacks on Settle and Shadwell. Nahum Tate 
wrote the rest, but Dryden inserted a few most cutting 
passages. Shadwell he had attacked in " Mac Flecknoe," 
in October, 1682, and the second part of "Absalom and 
Achitophel" contained denunciations of both him and 
Settle. There were sufficient reasons. Shadwell had at- 
tacked him in an incredibly coarse way for writing the 
"Medal." And, although there is much that is unquot- 
able in Dryden's satirical verse, that fault is to be put 
down to the time in which he lived rather than to his own 
discredit. He was decorum itself by the side of Shadwell, 
and, even when he is most violent in his reply, he has an 
air of good-natured superiority to his foes which must 
have galled them as much as it may amuse us. His own 
views on Satire were most reasonable, as he said in his 
" Essay on Satire " — the preface f to the translation of 

* Mentioned by Beljanae. 

f The long prefaces were not, as Swift said of Dryden's, in his lines 
"On Poetry, a Rhapsody," 

' ' Merely writ at first for filling, 
To raise the volume's price a shilling " 

(and see also " A Tale of a Tub," sec. v.), but rather because there was no 
other means of reaching the public. Then, too, there was the precedent 
of the French usage. Thus Boileau, in his second preface, ed. 1674 (Vic- 



English Literature. 59 

Juvenal and Persius. " How easy it is to call rogue and 
villain, and that wittily ! but how hard to make a man 
appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any 
of those opprobrious terms ! . . . This is the mystery of 
that noble trade. . . . Neither is it true that this fineness 
of raillery is offensive ; a witty man is tickled while he is 
hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not. . . . There is a 
vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man, 
and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from 
the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may 
be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a 
plain piece of work, of a bare hanging : but to make a 
malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband. 
I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be 
kind enough to think it belongs to me. The character of 
Zimri in my ' Absalom ' is, in my opinion, worth the whole 
poem. It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough, and 
he for whom it was intended was too witty to resent it as 
an injury. ... I avoided the mention of great crimes, and 
applied myself to the representing of blind sides and little 
extravagances, to which, the wittier a man is, he is gener- 
ally the more obnoxious." 

Yet, as he says elsewhere in the same essay : " Good 
sense and good nature are never separated, though the 
ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by 
which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of 
right reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the 
failings of others, by considering that there is nothing per- 
fect in mankind." Personal satire will always seem to be 
the result of ill-nature, and the world will in time become 

tor le Due's ed., p. 28): " J'avois medite une assez longue preface, ou, 
suivant la coutume re9ue parmi les ecrivains de ce temps, j'esperois ren- 
dre un compte fort exact de mes ouvrages, et justifier les libertes que j'ai 
prises." 



6o English Literature. 

indifferent to denunciations, however brilliant, when the 
inspiring causes have to be found out by remote investi- 
gation. We all have our own quarrels in our hands ; we 
are concerned with new forms of folly, and we are cold to 
Dryden's attacks on forgotten writers like Settle, or Pope's 
venomous abuse in the " Dunciad." Only those things live 
that are of universal application. Poetry, it has been said, 
treats of those qualities that are eternal in man, and the 
peculiar qualities of Settle and Shadwell are fortunately 
obsolete. At the end of the last century, Dr. Joseph 
Warton said that it was an undoubted fact that the " Ab- 
salom and Achitophel," which is far from being a virulent 
satire, was then but little read, and that the " Dunciad " 
began to be neglected. Yet, while we have grown in-- 
different to the sum of Dryden's satirical poems, we can 
never become tired of certain bits in which personality 
fades away in comparison with the excellence of his wit, 
as in the lines about Burnet, "Hind and Panther," 2477 : 

" Prompt to assail, and careless of defence, 
Invulnerable in his impudence^ 
He dares the world, and eager of a name, 
He thrusts about and justles into fame. 

* * * * * 

So fond of loud report that, not to miss 
Of being known (his last and utmost bliss) 
He rather would be known for what he is." 

Nothing could be better than the last line, which is all 
the more intensified by coming at the end of a triplet. 
When we come to Pope's " Dunciad," we shall see how 
seldom the later poet gives us the whole character of a 
man, which Dryden never fails to do. 

Of Dryden's other poems I shall speak but briefly ; the 
"Religio Laici," 1681, and the "Hind and the Panther," 
1687, were in many ways wonderful poems. Take a few 



English Literature, 6i 

lines of tlie "Religio Laici," for example, and we shall 
find Dry den's unfailing dexterity and wit : 

" The unlettered Christian who believes in gross, 
Plods on to heaven, and ne'er is at a loss : 
For the strait gate would be made straiter yet 
Were none admitted there but men of wit." 

In the early work he defends Protestantism against 
atheism and heresy. In the "Hind and the Panther" he 
writes in defence of the Roman Church, of which he had 
recently become a member, and the genuineness of his re- 
ligious fervor has been often questioned. This is a ques- 
tion that falls outside of our present discussion, but it 
may be worth while to point out some of the inconsisten- 
cies with which he has been charged. Certainly, Dry den 
seemed in earnest when he attacked " the bloody bear, an 
independent beast," "the buffoon ape" (the atheists), 
" the bristled Baptist boar," " False Reynard " (the Arians 
and Socinians), "the insatiate Wolf " (the Presbyterians). 
Yet it was remembered that he had already written on 
the other side of the religious controversy. In " Absalom 
and Achitophel," he had spoken coarsely of the doctrine 
of transubstantiation. In his "Spanish Friar," 1681, he 
ridiculed processions, the invocation of saints, and auric- 
ular confession. In his " Religio Laici," he attacked the 
Church of Rome ; in his " Duke of Guise," written in con- 
junction with Nat Lee, he defended a Catholic prince, and 
after the death of Charles II., when a Catholic king was on 
the throne, he wrote the " Hind and the Panther," in which 
he began by inviting the Church of England to unite with 
that of Rome, and ended by urging the dissenters to make 
common cause with Rome against the Church of England. 

In politics he showed the same fickleness. In " Am- 
boyna," he tried to stir up the English against the Dutch; 
in his " Absalom and Achitophel," and the " Medal," he 



62 English Literature. 

blamed Shaftesbury for encouraging that war. In liter- 
ary matters, as about the use of prose or verse in his plays, 
he was forever wavering. Another charge is brought, 
that he flattered the Duke and Duchess of Monmouth, 
who protected him in his need, and then that he abused 
them in "Absalom and Achitophel," and drew the infa- 
mous Duke of Guise, in the play of that name, from the 
Duke of Monmouth. 

Let us remember, however, the almost universal corrup- 
tion of the time, and in special defence of Dryden the fact 
that, great poet as he was, he wrote mainly as a journalist, 
so to speak. In the absence of other ways of reaching tha 
public, his poems were written to order for direct, imme- 
diate political effect, and with the same unscrupulousness 
that is sometimes seen in a corrupt press. This by no 
means frees his conduct from blame, but it may possibly 
be in part an explanation. 

As I say, I pass over these poems with some celerity, 
because we now take very little interest in the theological 
questions which were meat and drink to our ancestors in 
the seventeenth century, and the pOems are in the main 
dead. They are ingenious pamphlets in verse, and they 
doubtless set the fashion for the many didactic and theo- 
logical poems which weighed down the literature of the 
eighteenth century. They deserve the credit, however, of 
being about the best of their kind : The " Mac Fleck- 
noe," in which a wretched Irish poet, one Flecknoe, makes 
over the succession to Shadwell, is short, and will well re- 
pay attention. It has the great merit of being the one of 
the controversial poems of the time that is most nearly 
readable. The French influence, which Dryden, a thorough 
Englishman, was helping to introduce, had at least a molli- 
fying influence on this kind of writing. The beginning, 
familiar as it is, will show this : 



English Literature, 63 

"All human things are subject to decay, 
And, when fate summons, monarchs must oblige ; 
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young 
Was called to empire, and had governed long ; 
In prose and verse was owned without dispute, 
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute. 
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace, 
And blessed with issue of a large increase, 
Worn out with business, did at length debate 
To settle the succession of the state ; 
And pondering which of all his sons was fit 
To i-eign, and wage immortal war with wit, 
Cried, ' 'Tis resolved ! for nature pleads, that he 
Should only rule who most resembles me. 
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, 
Mature in dulness from his tender years ; 
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he 
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. 
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall. 
Strike through and make a lucid interval ; 
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, 
His rising fogs prevail upon the day. 
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye, 
And seems designed for thoughtless majesty ; 
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, 
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.' " 

This mock-lieroic is sometimes called an imitation of 
Boileau's famous poem, "Le Lutrin," which appeared in 
1674. In the French poem, certain ecclesiastics are turned 
into ridicule, just as is done with the literary adventurer in 
the English one. Yet we have Dryden's statement that 
the resemblance was accidental.* At any rate, the "Mac 

* Some time later, Dryden said in conversation, "If anything of mine 
is good, 'tis my ' Mac Flecknoe,' and I value myself the more on it, because 
'tis the first piece of ridicule written in heroics." His interlocutor vent- 



64 English Literature. 

Flecknoe " has the merit of brevity, and is not dull. The 
" Religio Laici " is dull, and as to the " Hind and the Pan- 
ther," I think that there must be few people who can care 
much for the theological discussions of those two beasts. 
The long controversy on the Test Acts, the authority of 
the pope, tjan substantiation, etc., are most unfortunately 
set. 

These extracts will serve to show what was the principle 
which Dryden, by precept and example, fastened on Eng- 
lish literature. We will not forget that it was not of his 
invention, nor yet necessarily what he most admired. He 
•had a warm feeling of reverence for Milton, and it is wor- 
thy of note that in 1688 there appeared a new edition of 
Milton, published by subscription, and that from this time 
that poet began to receive general admiration. At least, 
he was no longer overlooked. But in the new and swift 
advance towards our modern civilization exaggerated 
weight was laid on the external tokens of this civilization. 
While England was ready for the change, the French were 
busy in laying down the laws for its control in literature. 
Instead of lawlessness, polish ; instead of blank verse, 
rhyme ; above all things, elegance. We, who are the liv- 
ing witnesses of a somewhat similar revolution in taste, 
may readily understand how much more powerful than 
statute laws are new aesthetic rules. Probably even Nihi- 
lists love, or try to love, dados and friezes ; and we at 
once suspect the sincerity of any person who avows a lik- 
ing for white paint and green blinds. Similar forces were 
then at work in England to ruin any admiration for the 
great tragedians. They were looked upon as men of ability, 

ured to remind the poet of Boileau's "Lutrin," which Dryden said he 
had read, but had forgotten, and that he had not copied it. In Italian, 
too, a number of mock-heroics had been written. 



English Literatvre. 65 

who lacked that for which the modern equivalent is cult- 
ure. They were void of art, and art was the shibboleth 
of that age. As Dryden wrote to his " dear friend, Mr. 
Congreve, on his comedy called *The Double Dealer;' " 

" Well, then, the promised hour has come at last, 
The present age of wit obscures the past : 
Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ, 
Conquering with force of arm, and dint. of wit ; 
Theirs was the giant race before the flood ; 
And thus when Charles returned, our empire stood. 
Like James, he the stubborn soil manured, 
With rules of husbandry the rankness cured ; 
Tamed us to manners, when the stage was rude, 
And boisterous English wit with art endued. 
Our age was cultivated thus at length. 
But what we gain'd in skill, we lost in strength. 
Our builders were with want of genius curst ; 
The second temple was not like the first. 
Till you, the best Vitruvius, came at length, 
Our beauties equal, but excel our strength." 

When we come to speak of the plays, we shall see how 
the work of the early writers was regarded and treated. 
What was thought in the last century about Dryden's in- 
fluence on English poetry we may see in Dr. Johnson's 
life of that poet. He says : " Every language of a learned 
nation necessarily divides itself into diction scholastic and 
popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross ; and from 
a nice distinction of these different parts arises a great 
part of the beauty of style. . . ._ There was before the 
time of Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words at 
once refined from the grossness of domestic use and free 
from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular 
arts. From those sounds which we hear on small or on 
coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impres- 
sions " (How about Lear's "Pray you, undo this button " ?) 



66 English Literature. 

" or delightful images ; and words to which we are nearly 
strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on 
themselves which they should transmit to things. Those 
happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry 
from prose had been rarely attempted : we had few ele- 
gances or flowers of speech ; the roses had not yet been 
plucked from the bramble, or different colours had not 
been joined to enliven one another. . . . The new versifi- 
cation, as it was called, may be considered as owing its 
establishment to Dryden ; from whose time it is apparent 
that English poetry had no tendency to relapse to its for- 
mer savageness." 

IV. This has a strange sound to our ears ; savageness, 
indeed ! We must not forget that the whole aim of this 
school was the abolition of " eccentricity," of " arbitrari- 
ness," as Matthew Arnold calls it,* and that although the 
reaction has died and arbitrariness is again triumphant, 
this carefulness, the compliance with what the French 
critics preached as good-sense, once did service. 

Its methods are very clearly shown in the translations 
which Dryden made. And it is curious to notice how 
every new literary movement inspires its, supporters with 
the desire to make a new translation of the great classics. 
Something may be said, too, of the changes of public taste 
with regard to the favorite authors of antiquity, or of 
modern times, too, for that matter. We saw in the last 
chapter the slow growth in France of the admiration of 
Homer ; in the Elizabethan era Ovid f was the favorite 

* " Critical Essays " (Am. ed.), p. 335. 

f Marot (1495-1544) wrote: 

" Ovidius, maistre Alain Charretier, 
Petrarque aussi, le Roman de la Rose, 
Sont les Messelz, Breviaire, and Psaultier, 
Qu'en ce sainet Temple, on list, en rithme et prose." 



English Literature. 6'j 

poet ; with the increase of French influence came renewed 
respect for Yergil ; Pope translated one book of Statins — 
to be sure, with an apology ; Marlowe translated the first 
book of Lucan at the end of the sixteenth century, and 
two other translations appeared in 1614 and 1627 respec- 
tively. Horace's Satires were translated before the Odes 
— these last-named were not all done into English, it will 
be remembered, until 1625, and it is only recently that 
Catullus has been translated in full. * There is no need 
of anything like a complete list of the translations of 
Ovid; the statistics would be tedious. The main point 
is, that in the Elizabethan age he was a favorite Latin 
poet, and that his conceits were then thought more highly 
of than they now are. Horace was greatly admired in'the 

* Proofs of the variations of taste are readily found. As one indication 
of this relative popularity at the time, take the mottoes to the different 
numbers of the Spectator. We find, from a hurried count, Horace, Ars 
Poetica, Epodes, and Satires, 168; Odes, 51; Vergil, 124; Ovid, 55; 
Juvenal, 42 ; Persius, 10 ; Martial, 14 ; Cicero, 26 ; Lucretius, 5 ; Ter- 
ence, 12; Seneca, 3; Lucan, 7; Tacitus, Claudian, and Catullus, 1. 

Lovelace translated ten or twelve poems of Catullus, half-a-dozen of 
Martial's epigrams, and many of those of Ausonius. 

" Boileau disait : ' Je puis dire que c'est moi qui ai fait connoitre les 
satires et les epitres d'Horace : on ne parlait que de ses odes.' " — Victor 
Le Due's "Boileau," p. 1. But Vauquelin de la Fresnaie {vide infra) had 
preceded Boileau by nearly a century with Horatian satires and literary 
rules. 

Percival Stockdale, "Lectures on Truly Eminent English Poets," 1807, 
vol. i. p. 38 : " Your merely great philosophers have always made a most 
contemptible and ridiculous figure when they have usurped the chair of 
poetical criticism. Blackmore, ' rumbling rough and fierce,' was the great- 
est of poets in the opinion of the venerable and illustrious Locke ; and 
Catullus and Parnell were the first favorites of the Muses, in the judgement 
of David Hume ; who was a very great man when he kept within his meta- 
physical and historical sphere." See, too, vol. ii. p. 652, of his tedious 
book. 



68 English Literature. 

last century ; now we are becoming more sensitive than 
were our grandfathers to what we take to be a more pure- 
ly poetic feeling. Statius and Lucan scarcely exist for us. 

To draw any inferences from the fact that Dryden trans- 
lated the "^neid," and Pope Homer, would be a very 
dangerous thing, but possibly some of the other instances 
are deserving of attention. Similar alterations of taste 
with regard to other things will readily suggest them- 
selves, such as the modern love of the Gothic, and for cer- 
tain Italian painters ; the cool feeling of us, who are later 
born, for the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvedere, in com- 
parison with the admiration they called forth in the last 
century. 

Every generation, then, has its own way, not only of ex- 
pressing despairing love, the vanity of all things, and the 
mutability of fortune, but it also seeks to render those 
great poems that have acquired a somewhat similar im- 
mortality into such language as shall at the time seem the 
fittest medium of expression. Thus we see, in every, trans- 
lation, some of the peculiarities of the period in which it 
was made. For example. Chapman says : 

" But when they joined, the dreadful clamour rose 
To such a height, as not the sea, when up the North-spirit blows 
Her raging billows, bellows so against the beaten shore ; 
Nor such a rustling keeps a fire, driven with violent blore 
Through woods that grow against a hill ; nor so the fervent strokes 
Of almost bursting winds resound against a grove of oaks ; 
As did the clamour of these hosts, when both the battles closed." 

" Iliad," xiv, 327. 
Pope renders the passage as follows : 

*' Both armies join : Earth thunders, Ocean roars. 
Not half so loud the bellowing deeps resound, 
When stormy winds disclose the dark profound ; 
Less loud the winds that from the jEolian hall 
Roar through the woods, and make whole forests fall, 



English Literature. 69 

Less loud the woods, when flames in torrents pour, 
Catch the dry mountain and its shades devour." 

Other extracts, with appropriate comments, the reader 
will find in Mr. Matthew Arnold's " Lectures on Translat- 
ing Homer," reprinted among his " Essays." As Mr. 
Swinburne well says of Chapman, in the volume devoted 
to the exposition of that poet's genius, his style "can 
give us but the pace of a giant for echo of the footfall of 
a god." We now go back to Chapman with delight, for 
we are ready to overlook his obvious errors ; but when 
Pope lived, Chapman's conceits and exaggerations had be- 
come insufferable, and a new translation into the language 
of the day was called for, and this Pope furnished. Pope 
gives his predecessor credit for the " daring, fiery spirit 
that animates his translation, which is something like 
what one might imagine Homer himself would^have writ 
before he arrived at years of discretion," but, he says, 
Chapman's " expression is involved in fustian." In his 
own translation. Pope complied with the spirit of his time, 
and was always clear ; his style, too, was dignified, though 
with a dignity very unlike Homer's. Homer's eloquence 
he adorned with countless epigrams, as when Helen ap- 
peared on the walls in the third book of the " Iliad :" 

" Before thy presence, father, I appear, 
With conscious shame and reverential fear. 
Ah ! had I died, ere to these walls I fled. 
False to my country and my nuptial bed ; 
My brothers, friends, and daughters left behind, 
False to them all, to Paris only kind. 
For this I mourn, till grief or dire disease 
Shall waste the form whose crime it was to please." ■ 

This was part of the same spirit that enabled the actors 
representing Greeks and Romans to appear in high-heeled 
shoes, coats, and full wigs. Cowper, in his turn, expressed 



70 English Literature. 

the modern reaction against the epigrammatic couplet, 
and the reverence for Milton which we shall see growing 
up throughout the last century ; he took Homer out of 
that, at length, unfashionable suit, and put him into the 
chains of the Miltonic inversions. Thus, in the answer of 
Achilles' horses : 

" For not through sloth oi' tardiness on us 
Aught chargeable, have Iliou's sons thine arms 
Stript from Patroclus' shoulders ; but a god, 
Matchless in battle, offspring of bright-haired 
Latona, him contending in the van, 
Slew, for the glory of the chief of Troy." 

Gary, Lamb's friend, translated Dante in the same way. 

In our own times, which are those of critical examina- 
tion and experiment, we find Mr. Newman trying the bal- 
lad measure, as in this passage : 

" gentle friend ! if thou and I, from this encounter 'scaping. 
Hereafter might forever be from Eld and Death exempted 
As heavenly gods, not I, in sooth, would fight among the foremost^ 
Nor liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle. 
Now — sith ten thousand shapes of Death do any-gait pursue us, 
Which never mortal may evade, tho' sly of foot and nimble ; 
Onward !" etc. 

We have to add Mr. Worsley's translation of the 
" Odyssey " in the Spenserian stanza ; Lord Derby's and 
Mr. Bryant's into blank verse ; Conington's rendering of 
Vergil, the most polished of authors, in the rough-and- 
ready measure of "Marmion." One might as well try to 
whistle a symphony. Then, too, Mr. William Morris, af- 
ter playing for some time that he was Chaucer, put the 
"^neids," as he called the poem, into early English, as 
thus, when Hector's ghost appears in the second book : 

" Most sorrowful to see he was, and weeping plenteous flood. 
And e'en as torn, behind the car, black with the dust and blood, 



English Literature. 71 

His feet all swollen with the. thong that pierced them through and 

through. 
Woe worth the while for what he was ! how changed from him we 

knew !" 

And everywhere we come upon such mock-English as 
" why thus wise," etc. 

Mr. Arnold recommends translating Homer into English 
hexameters, while Mr. Tennyson, again, gives us a speci- 
men in blank verse. 

In his discussion of the course to be followed by a trans- 
lator, Dryden is, as he always is in his prefaces, very in- 
teresting. He says : " When I have taken away some of 
their expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be 
on this consideration that what was beautiful in the Greek 
or Latin would not appear so shining in the English ; and 
when I have enlarged them, I desire the false critics would 
not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but 
that either they are secretly in the poet, or may be fairly 
deduced from him ; or at least, if both these considera- 
tions should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and 
that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such 
as he would probably have written. For, after all, a trans- 
lator is to make his author appear as charming as possibly 
he can, provided he maintains his character, and makes 
him not unlike himself." * It is really hard to stop quot- 
ing, but there is one brief passage which possibly was 
newer two hundred years ago than it is now : " Not only 
the thoughts, but the style and versification of Virgil and 
Ovid are very different ; yet I see, even in our best poets, 

* The lack of precision in the first translations of foreign books is wor- 
thy of note. Anything strange has to have its peculiarities rubbed off 
before it interests us. Thus, while now we demand exact rendering of 
Homer and Vergil, we accept the Mahabharata very much diluted with 
modernisms from the pen of Mr. Edwin Arnold. 



'J2 English Literature. 

who have translated some part of them, that they have 
confounded their several talents ; and, by endeavouring 
only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made 
them both so much alike, that if I did not know the orig- 
inals, I should never be able to judge by the copies, which 
was Yirgil and which was Ovid." Dryden's obiter dicta 
on matters generally pronounced upon only by scholars 
are very valuable, for the quality of a man's genius is 
more important in his judgment of matters of taste than 
any amount of education. But I resist all temptations to 
quote lavishly, and pass over to the end of the preface, 
where Dryden says : " Milton's ' Paradise Lost ' is admira- 
ble ; but am I, therefore, bound to maintain, that there 
are no flats amongst his elevations, when 'tis evident he 
creeps along sometimes, for above an hundred lines togeth- 
er ? Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the 
strength of his invention, without defending his anti- 
quated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound ? 
It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own 
him excellent ; all beyond is idolatry." This is the place 
where we rest with regard to Dryden. The modern feel- 
ing towards him is certainly not idolatrous. 

V. Dryden had no question in his mind as to the form 
in which the translations should appear : there was but 
one, and that one he made use of. There is certainly a 
great charm in his renderings of Chaucer, of whom he 
speaks at some length. In the older poet's verse Dryden 
says " there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune which 
is natural and pleasing, though not perfect." I have not 
space to quote the opening of the " Nun's Priest's Tale," * 

* The following correspondence explains Drydeu's choice : 

"Dryden to Pepys. 

"July 14, 1699. 

' *' Padron 7nio, — I remember last year, when I had the honour of dining 



English Literature. 73 

or of " The Cock and the Fox ;" but, although the newer 
form has a quality which does not belong to Chaucer, it is 
yet well worth attention, and I think that even those who 
know the originals will read Dryden's versions with de- 
light. And since the bane of the present day is pedan- 
try, and many otherwise worthy persons will avow that 
they are led by love of sincerity to condemn any working- 
over of Chaucer's material, I would add that even now 
there are constantly appearing renderings of Chaucer, and 
that in one of the most celebrated we find versions con- 
tributed by Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, R. H. Home, 
etc., whose names are not proverbial for insincerity. The 
true test, of course, is the poems themselves, and they are 
among the most readable things Dryden ever wrote. In 
the course of time the controversial poems will, I think, 

with you, you were pleased to recommend to me the character of Chaucer's 
' Good Parson.' Any desire of yours is a command to me, and according- 
ly I have put it into my English, with such additions and alterations as I 
thought fit. 

" Having translated as many fables from Ovid, and as many novels from 
Boccace and tales from Chaucer, as will make an indifferent large volume 
in folio, I intend them for the press in Michaelmas Term next. In the 
mean time, my 'Parson' desires the favour of being known to you, and 
promises, if you find any fault in his character, he will reform it. When- 
ever you please, he shall wait on you, and for the safer conveyance, I will 
carry him in my pocket, who am 

" My padron's most obedient servant, 

"John Drtden." 

Pepys answered on the same day: 

" You truly have obliged me, and, possibly, in saying so, I am more in 
earnest than you can readily think, as verily hoping from this your copy 
of our ' Good Parson ' to fancy some amends made me for the hourly of- 
fence I bear with from the sight of so many lewd originals." 

Pepys's collection of ballads, left to Magdalen College, Cambridge, was 
the main source of Percy's "Reliques;" vide his Preface. Pepys was one 
of the men whose taste was not merely that of his day. 

4 



74 Engluh Littrature. 

lose their interest, but the charm of these will never quite 
disappear. He calls the birds "the painted birds," to be 
sure, and the nightingale is Philomel. Dryden, in a 
word, used the language of his time ; and is not that, in 
some respects, better employment than frantically strug- 
gling to use the language of some other time ? Dryden, 
too, was clear, and that is a merit in these days, when 
the reader has put before him alliterative obscurity like 

this : 

" Hollow heaven and the hurricane, 

And hurry of the heavy rain. 

" Hurried clouds in the hollow heaven, 
And a heavy rain hard-driven, 

" The heavy rain, it hurries amain, 
And heaven and the hurricane. 

*' Hurrying wind o'er the heaven's hollow, 
And the heavy rain to follow." * 

Dryden's odes are well known. His " Song for St. Ce- 
cilia's Day " and his " Alexander's Feast " are among the 
familiar poems of the language ; but there are others less 
familiar — as, for instance, that on Anne Killigrew, which 
Dr. Johnson said " is the noblest ode that our language 
ever has produced." It was Cowley who revived the 
composition of odes, which he called "the noblest and 
highest writing in verse," and Dr. Johnson styled " lax and 
lawless versification." The odes Avere further called 
Pindaric by a flight of the imagination, which was not 
always to be found in the poems themselves. 

The first and finest stanza of the ode on Anne Killi- 
grew runs thus : 

" Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, 
Made in the last promotion of the bless'd ; 

* "Chimes," D. G. Rossetti'3 "Ballads and Sonnets," p. 281. 



English Literature. 75 

Whose palms, new-pluck'd from paradise, 
In spreading branches more sublimely rise, 
Rich with immortal green above the rest : 
"Whether adopted to some neighb'ring star, 
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race ; 

Or, in procession fix'd and regular, 

Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace ; 

Or, called to more superior bliss, 
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss : 
Whatever happy region is thy place, 
Cease thy celestial song a little space ; 
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, 

Since heaven's eternal year is thine. 
Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, 

In no ignoble verse." 

Joseph Warton, however, said that " to a cool and candid 
reader, it appears absokitely unintelligible. Examples of 
bad writing, of tumid expressions, violent metaphors, far- 
sought conceits, hyperbolical adulation, unnatural amplifi- 
cations, interspersed, as usual, with fine lines, might be 
collected from this applauded ode." And, in fact, in the 
last stanza we come across a passage that illustrates one 
of Dryden's faults very clearly : 

" When in mid air the golden trump shall sound, 
To raise the nations underground : 
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat, 
The judging God shall close the book of fate ; 
And there the last assizes keep 
For those who wake and those who sleep : 
When rattling bones together fly 
From the four corners of the sky." 

Indeed, the Day of Judgment seems to have aroused 
singular notions in Dryden, for elsewhere he speaks of the 
"drowsy mortals," and says, " When, called in haste, they 
fumble for their limbs" ("Don Sebastian"). Moreover, 
it would be hard to name another writer of reputation 



j6 English. Literature. 

who mingles fine lines and bad ones in such confusion as 
Dryden continually does. In the passage I have just read, 
the fine-sounding line, which reminds us of the line in Mr. 
Fitzgerald's translation of "Omar Khayyam" (2d ed.), 
*' That we might catch ere closed the book of fate," * comes 
just before the most unpoetic lines of the ode, which then 
rises to a finer ending. It is easy to find many examj)les of 
similar carelessness. His plays are full of passages that 
would have made the fortune of a burlesque. Thus, in the 
"Royal Martyr," Maximin, the tyrant, says to the gods : 

*' Keep your rain and sunshine in the skies, 
And I'll keep back my flame and sacrifice ; 
Your trade of Heaven shall soon be at a stand, 
And all your goods lie dead upon your hand." 

And the same tyrant, when dying, says : 

" And after thee I'll go, 
Kevenging still, and following e'en to th' other world my blow, 
And, shoving back this earth on which I sit, 
I'll mount and scatter all the gods I hit." 

And how Dryden could mix paltriness with beauty, we 
may see in this passage '(" Conquest of Granada") : 

" That busy thing, 
The soul, is 'packing up, and just on wing 
Like parting swallows when they seek the spring." 

And often, too, he could be dreary without relief, as when 
a dying hero (in "Amboyna") says : 

*' Give to my brave 
Employers of the East India Company, 

* Pope, " Essay on Man," i. 77 : 

'* Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate." 
Shakspere, " 2 Henry IV.," III. i. 45 : 

" God ! that we misiht read the book of fate." 



English Literature. 77 

The last remembrance of my faithful service ; 
Tell them I seal that service with my blood ; 
And, dying, wish to all their factories, 
And all the famous merchants of our isle, 
That wealth their generous industry deserves." 

As Dryden himself said, "A man must not write all lie 
can, but all lie ought ;" yet very often Dryden was com- 
pelled by want to write all he could, and the result was 
bad. That he should have been ridiculed by some of the 
writers of his time is not strange, for we will all acknowl- 
edge that the contemporaries of a great man are apt to 
judge him by his failures, while posterity estimates his po- 
sition by what is best in his work. Everywhere Dryden 
has given abundant traces of ability. He possessed va- 
rious qualities — the mastery of versification, and, for that 
matter, of prose ; he reasoned ingeniously ; and he had a 
fine poetic quality that lights up what we nowadays are 
accustomed to regard as an unpoetic stylCo His lyrical 
power, too, must not be forgotten. 

These poems lead us to his plays, in which his fault^ 
and his merits are most fully shown. Whatever our 
opinion of his poetic powers may be, there can be no 
doubt of the important place he fills in any study of Eng- • 
lish literature. He was the greatest English poet after 
Milton for at least a century, and he helped, more than 
any one, to shape the laws which prevailed for that period. 
We have seen what these were in verse ; let us now ex- 
amine the condition of the stage at the time of the Res-y 
toration, and its subsequent development. 



78 English Literature, 



CHAPTER III. 

I. So far we have seen no very striking instances of any 
close resemblance between the English and the French 
styles. Dryden's asperities, as well as his vigor, are very 
unlike the polish of the French, yet in the imitations of 
the French thoughtfulness and reason we see a continual 
effort to model the Englishman after his neighbor across 
the Channel. In fact, there was hardly any period when 
the French and English were more unlike than they were 
just at the time when Dry den lived. In France, after the 
great civil and religious wars of the sixteenth century, 
there was a very marked movement towards refinement and 
social cultivation, and the advance of civilization was very 
swift. Those who took an interest in literature were quick 
to respond to their guides, who showed great intelligence 
in discovering and directing the tastes of the French peo- 
ple. The court, too, was not in hostility to the rest of the 
country, as was the case in England after the Restoration. 
There was in France no public outside of fashionable cir- 
cles,* and these responded quickly to the polish which was 

* Lotheissen says : " Wahrend des XVII*«° Jahrhunderts gibt das Biir- 
gerthum wohl eine Reihe von Gelehrten und gebildeten Mannern ; es erhe- 
ben sich aus seinen Reihen die grossten Dichter die Frankreich je beses- 
sen ; aber diese alle arbeiten nur fiir Hofkreise, fiir die Welt des Adels und 
der hoben Gesellschaft." — " Gesehichte der franzozischen Literatur des 
XVIPe" Jahrhunderts," i. 17. 



English Literature. 79 

preached and illustrated by the literary leaders. The 
romances of the time were not mere accumulations of 
vapid sentiment : they inculcated virtue and refinement ; 
their heroes were knightly persons— tedious, to be sure, 
but true to a high ideal The French tragedians expressed 
the same civilizing qualities. If it be objected that the 
Greeks and Romans whom they put upon the stage are 
really Frenchmen with classical names, that is, after all, a 
conventionalism which, if once acknowledged to exist, need 
not trouble us longer. There is a certain amount of ped- 
antry in demanding faithfulness to an ideal when nobody 
knows with precision what the ideal really is. Then, too, 
even Greeks and Romans who are like Frenchmen have 
an advantage over the Greeks and Romans of the English 
stage after the Restoration, who are like no one that ever 
lived. 

As we have already seen, it was at the end of the six- 
teenth century and the beginning of the next (1555-1628) 
that Malherbe in France was really, so far as one man can be 
said to do anything of the kind, moulding the course which 
French literature was to follow for two hundred years. 
His predecessors tried to introduce classical words, phrases, 
and forms into French. Malherbe, however, though of very 
moderate ability as a poet, allied himself with those who 
preferred to aid the development of the French language. 
This was the democratic side, one may say, if we remember 
that what we call the people were wholly without influence. 
Perhaps it would be better to say that this was the modern 
side. But, while he did this, he threw overboard almost 
everything else that we are accustomed to regard as essen- 
tial to poetry ; and, while he insisted on precise versification 
and exact rhymes, he avoided picturesque language and 
recommended smooth commonplaces. French literature 
became correct, but it paid for it by becoming compara- 



8o English Literature, 

tively lifeless. I say comparatively lifeless, for, if French 
tragedy is marked by mannerisms, the comedy at least had 
a higher life than it had in England. 

The correctness, then, of the French was more or less 
the model set before English writers after the Restoration, 
yet they seldom attained more than an outside polish. Let 
us see what it was they did in the drama. Even before the 
Commonwealth we notice the gradual deterioration of the 
plays, if indeed Jonson's method may not be looked on as 
the first step towards artificial composition ; those play- 
wrights whom we call great began to vie with one another 
in accumulating horrors, although they all had part of the 
grand style, and knew how to relieve what was terrible by 
bits of natural beauty and pathos. 

II. In preparation for the struggle that was to come, 
the Puritans early began their attack upon the stage. Even 
about 1575 they opposed the building of theatres in every 
way in their power, and they wrote tracts and large vol- 
umes against it, but the main attack was made in 1633 in 
a book called the " Histrio-Mastix," written by William 
Prynne. Its full title ran thus : " Histrio-Mastix, The 
Players Scourge ; or, Actors Tragedie, Divided into Two 
Parts. Wherein it is largely evidenced, by divers Argu- 
ments, by the Concurring Authorities and Resolutions of 
sundry Texts of Scripture, of the whole Primitive Church, 
both under the Law and the Gospell ; of 55 Synodes and 
Councils ; of '71 Fathers and Christian Writers before 
the Year of our Lord 1200 ; of about 150 foraigne and 
domestique Protestant and Popish Authors, since ; of 
40 Heathen Philosophers, Historians, Poets, of many 
Heathen, many Christian Nations, Republiques, Emper- 
ors, Princes, Magistrates ; of sundry Apostolicall, Canon- 
icall, Imperiall Constitutions ; and of our own English 
Statutes, Magistrates, Universities, Writers, Preachers. 



English Literature. 8i 

That popular Stage-playes (the very Pompes of the Divell 
which we renounce in Baptisme, if we believe the Fathers) 
are sinf ull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most 
pernicious Corruptions ; condemned in all ages, as intoler- 
able Mischiefes to Churches, to Republickes, to the man- 
ners, mindes, and soules of men. And that the Profession 
of Play-poets, of Stage-players ; together with the pen- 
ning, acting, and frequenting of Stage-plays, are unlaw- 
full, infamous and misbeseeming Christians. All pre- 
tences to the contrary are here likewise fully answered ; 
and the unlawfulness of acting, of beholding Academicall 
Interludes, briefly discussed ; besides sundry other partic- 
ulars concerning Dancing, Dicing, Health-Drinking, etc., 
of which the Table will informe you." 

That the work of the literary critic in those days was 
laborious is shown by this title, as well as by the fact, 
which I quote at second-hand, that it contains, according 
to one estimate, one hundred thousand references ;* I have 
not counted them. It is also said that four thousand texts 
are quoted against the stage. That it was perilous is shown 
by Prynne's punishment for his violence. Those who danced 
or looked on at dancing, he said, assisted at a lewd service 
of the devil. This was construed as an insult to the queen, 
who occasionally danced at court masques, and Prynne's 
sentence ran : " That Master Prynne should be committed 
to prison during life, pay a fine of £5000 to the king, be 



* He refers to about one thousand authorities, and there are 1106 pages. 

This is his manner (p. 65) : " That the stile and subject matter of most is 
amorous and obscene ; it is as evident as the morning sunne. 1st, by the 
express and punctual testimony of sundry Fathers. Read but " (sixty-four 
references) "to whom I adde" (twelve more). 

" Peruse, I say, but these several Fathers and councils (whose words, if I 
should at large transcribe them, would amount unto an ample volume), 
and you shall find them all concur in this." 

4* 



82 E'liglish Literature. 

expelled Lincoln's Inn, disbarred and disabled ever to exer- 
cise the profession of a barrister ; degraded by the Univer- 
sity of Oxford of his degree there taken ; and that done, 
be set in the pillory at Westminster, with a paper on his 
head declaring the nature of his offence, and have one of 
his ears there cut off, and at another time be set in the pil- 
lory at Cheapside, with a paper as aforesaid, and then have 
his other ear cut off ; and that a fire shall be made before 
the said pillory, and the hangman being there ready for 
that purpose, shall publicly in disgraceful manner cast all 
the said books which could be produced into the fire to be 
burnt, as unfit to be seen by any hereafter." * 

On the second of September, 1642, the ordinance passed 
the Lords and Commons, stating that "while these sad 
causes and set-times of humiliation do continue, stage- 
plays shall cease and be forborne." This law was evaded 
in some few instances by the few actors who were found 
in London ; these acted in obscure taverns, at private 
houses, etc., but in the main the law was observed. 

III. In 1656, Sir William Davenant, of whom mention 
has been made, ventured to bring forth an entertainment 
made up of declamation and music " after the manner of 
the ancients," which was no play, but, in fact, an opera. 
This was made over into a play and represented in its new 
form after the Restoration, when its author was Charles 

* Prynne is said to haA^e recanted, and in 1649 there appeared a thin 
pamphlet with this title : " Mr. William Prynne his defense of Stage plays ; 
or, a Retraction of a former book of his called ' Histrio-Mastix.' " In this 
recantation there is an apology for calhng Charles I. Nero, and the queen 
by worse names, for being interested in plays. Mention is made of the 
fact that George Buchanan, Barclay, and others wrote for the stage, and 
it is said that the drama might also teach lessons of virtue. 

The genuineness of the pamphlet is, however, open to doubt. No man 
ever changes his mind after establishing his views by more than seventy- 
live thousand references. 



English Literature. 83 

II. 's poet-laureate, and the manager of one of the two dra- 
matic companies then licensed. The play itself is note- 
worthy for two or three things outside of its purely liter- 
ary qualities — these call for no comment. First, it was one 
of the plays in which women appeared upon the stage. 
This had happened occasionally before, but now it became 
the rule, with but few exceptions, that the women's parts 
should be played by women. Secondly, Davenant intro- 
duced in this play something like scene-painting : for the 
first time an attempt was made, by means of the decora- 
tion of the proscenium, to give some scenic eJffect. In the 
third place, but less important, was the fact that the music 
introduced into this play remained, with the singing and 
dancing, in all the heroic plays ; and fourthly, and finally, 
it was written in rhymed couplets, after the manner of the 
French tragedians. That these plays bore much resem- 
blance to the masterpieces of the French stage cannot be 
affirmed, and even the sound of the lines is very unlike 
that of the models. Yet it is this resemblance to the eye 
which is almost the only one between the plays of the two 
countries. What the English did under the influence of 
French literature was something different. They were not 
inspired to any considerable extent by the great plays ; it 
was rather the long, artificial heroic romances that are re- 
sponsible for the English heroic drama,* which was really 
a most mongrel creation. Let us, for example, compare the 
subjects of the French tragedies with those of Dryden and 
his fellow-countrymen. The French writers, almost with- 
out exception, selected classical subjects, Cinna, Horace, 
Mritamiicits, Iphigeneia, Pha3dra, Andromache. Where do 
we find such a collection of classical subjects in the Eng- 
lish literature of the time ? No : the English playwrights 

* Yet the French tragedy was not without the same tendency. Vide 
Corneille's " Cid," " Don Sanche," etc. 



84 English Literature. 

chose such subjects as the Indian Queen, the Indian Em- 
peror, the Maiden Queen, the Royal Martyr, the Con- 
quest of Granada, the Empress of Morocco. The same 
inspiration could not have been at work in both countries. 
The English dramatists found to some extent their plots, 
and much more their way of drawing characters, in these 
long romances I have mentioned, very much as the Eliza- 
bethan writers took their plots from the early Italian 
novelists — Bandello, etc. 

The English representative of the combination of pas- 
toral and knightly romances is Sidney's " Arcadia " (written 
in 1580 and 1581, and published in 1590). The pastoral part 
was due to Italian influence, for it was in Italy that this, 
like most of the forms of literature that have flourished in 
Europe, first made its appearance. It was at about the end 
of the fifteenth century, about 1472, that the earliest of the 
pastorals was written, the " Orfeo " of Poliziano. This was 
a combination of tragedy, pastoral, and opera ; a dramatic 
poem of four hundred and thirty-four lines, and lyrical 
rather than tragical.* It was quickly followed by a 
host of rustic comedies, eclogues, etc. One nearly con- 
temporary work which had a great influence on Sidney 
was Sanazzaro's " Arcadia " (1504). This was in prose and 
verse, and consisted of twelve prose pieces, each introduc- 
ing an eclogue ; but, while it referred after a fashion to 
events in Sanazzaro's life, it lacked all plot. The book is 
a mere accumulation of pastoral scenery and machinery, 
not a coherent tale or poem, and we read it now as a col- 
lection of charming descriptions, or as a literary curiosity. 
Here began the custom of giving living persons pastoral 
names, which ran through all the literatures of Europe, and 
even survived as late as the beginning of this century. 

* Vide Symonds's " Italiaii Renaissance," iv. 412, 



English Literature. 85 

Pastorals, which soon degenerated into a mere literary- 
form, were at first the poetical representations of a new 
ideal. As Catholicism lost its hold on the world, and the 
expectation of a life of happiness beyond the grave grew 
faint, men looked back to the past as to a period of inno- 
cence and flawless happiness. Visions of Paradise, which 
were as dim as prophecies, seemed to be fragmentary recol- 
lections of a distant past; Ovid's " Metamorphoses," Theoc- 
ritus's " Idylls," and Vergil's " Eclogues " directly favored 
this idea.* The Golden Age was suddenly put back into 
the remote time which was supposed to have been a period 
of pastoral simplicity. This it was which inspired much of 
the new literature, and in time grew to be the ideal of nat- 
ure current throughout civilized Europe, which the Italian 
Arcadians sought to imitate,f and painters and poets had 
in their mind until Rousseau let in the fresh air with his 
praise of the Alps in the " Nouvelle Heloise." Yet, while 
Rousseau demolished the rococo prettiness of Arcadia, he 
gave new life to the underlying notion that civilization was 
degradation, by using all his eloq^uence to prove that men 
were born equal and had been happy and virtuous only in 
a savage state. This was the underlying principle of many 
socialist schemes. 

The notion of a past Golden Age may be said to have 
died only within a few years, modern scientific discoveries 
placing it, if anywhere, in the future. The old theory lin- 
gers, however, in comparatively recent books. Archbishop 
Whateley, for instance, in his text-book on Rhetoric, warm- 
ly upholds the hypothesis that savages are all degenerate 
descendants of our original civilization. In the last century 
there were men who doubted this explanation. Gibbon, 

* Vide Syraonds's *' Renaissance in Italy," v. 197. 

f Vide Vernon Lee's " Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy." 



86 Knglish Literature. 

who was prone to doubt, contested it ; De Maistre, who 
was inclined to conservatism, eloquently defended it. Even 
Niebuhr supported the notion.* 

We now laugh at Arcadia and its admirers, but we should 
not forget that it stood, as Mr. Symonds says, for all that 
was imagined of the Golden Age, combined with refined 
manners and polite society. It was an aristocratic region, 
inhabited only by poets, knights, and lovely ladies ; and, 
now we have learned to look upon it as a feudal territory, we 
see that the Golden Age of the future must be democratic. 
Yet, with all its shortcomings, Arcadia kept alive a gra- 
cious ideal of honor and sentiment. Surely this merit 
should not be forgotten. It did good service, for one 
thing, in refining literature. Mr. Gosse's interesting article 
in the Cornhill, some time in the year 1881, on the match- 
less Orinda, will well illustrate its most flourishing condi- 
tion in England, though continual reference to it is to 
be found in the Spectator, Rambler, etc. Sanazzaro in 
his " Eclogse Piscatorise," I may say incidentally, " hath 
changed the scene in this kind of poetry from woods and 
lawns to the barren beach and boundless ocean : introduces 
sea-calves in the room of kids and lambs, sea-mews for the 
lark and the linnet, and presents his mistress with oysters 
instead of fruits and flowers." f His ''Arcadia" found 
imitators in Spain and Portugal, and in France. The Por- 
tuguese imitation, Montemayor's " Diana Enamorada," \ 

* Vide Tylor's " Primitive Culture," chap. ii. 

f Steele, in Guarcliayi^ No. 28. 

\ In "Don Quixote," the niece said: "Pray, order the 'Diana Enamo- 
rada' ... to be burned ^yith the rest, for should my uncle be cured of 
this distemper of chivalry, he may possibly, by reading such books, take it 
into his head to turn shepherd and wander through the woods and folds, 
singing and playing on a pipe ; and what would be still worse, turn poet, 
which they say is an incurable and contagious disease," But the book 
was saved. 



English Literature. 87 

contained more plot than tlie Italian " Arcadia," and was 
also followed by Sidney. The romances, which also con- 
tributed to the formation of the heroic novels, lay at 
hand ; they were really a part of the inheritance which 
modern Europe received from the Middle Ages. The first 
and the most famous of those in prose was the " Amadis 
of Gaul," written, it is conjectured, by a Portuguese who 
died in 1403 or 1404, one Lobeira, a busy student of 
old romances* about Charlemagne and Arthur. This 
was translated into Spanish about 1500, and from that 
language into French in 1540. In Spain this novel really 
established a long line of knightly prose romance. In 
France it became exceedingly popular, and it was put 
into English from the French version in 1567. You will 
remember that " Amadis de Gaule " is one of Don Quix- 
ote's books, saved from burning by the priest and the 
barber. Montaigne, it is curious to note, says, " As to the 
'Amadises,' and such kind of stuff, they had not the 
credit to take me, so much as in my childhood. And I 
will moreover say (whether boldly or rashly), that this 
old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer delighted with 
Ariosto, no, nor with the good fellow Ovid ; his facility 
and invention, with which I was formerly so ravished, are 
now of no relish, and I can hardly have the patience to read 
him" (bk. ii. chap. x.). 

In England Sidney's " Arcadia " had no direct followers, 
with the exception of at least two brief continuations; but 
in France the romances of this kind became the regular 
form of the prose fiction of the time. In 1608 appeared 
the first part of Honoi e d'Urfe's " Astrsea," translated into 

* The old French romances doubtless did good service in encouraging 
the popular enthusiasm for the Crusades, which in their turn gave new 
material to the romances. Vide Palgrave's " History of England and Nor- 
mandy," iv. 496. 



88 English Literature. 

English in 1657 ; tMs was succeeded by the heroic romances 
by Gomberville, Calprenede, and Mile, de Scudery. These 
novels are, in the first place, now absolutely unreadable ; 
and if their writers had anything to communicate, it could 
hardly fail to be diluted by the enormous amount of pad- 
ding which was required to fill up the vast bulk of these 
colossal stories. Gomberville's " Pharamond," for instance, 
appeared in French in 1661, and was translated into Eng- 
lish a few years later. This translation contains seven 
hundred and fifty-eight folio pages, with over nine hun- 
dred words on each page — say seven hundred thousand 
words in all. And this is but one of many. In these ex- 
cessively long-winded stories we find plenty of love-making 
of a very polite kind, and much fighting. Problems of 
love - casuistry are continually discussed ; and, more than 
this, many of them were written about the author's con- 
temporaries, who were turned into Greeks or Romans or 
Carthaginians; and they went through a travesty of ancient 
history while talking after the manner of those friends 
whom the author wished to embalm. Thus Conde appears 
in one of Mile, de Scudery's novels, and others are now 
interpreted by the curious. Yet for the most part they 
described simply adventures in cloudland, and are full of 
gallantry and a sort of chivalrous elegance. 

These were admired in France in the first half of the 
seventeenth century, but by 1660 they began to sink to 
their proper place in the general estimation. The influence 
of Boileau and Malherbe was cruelly unfavorable to the 
natural development of French literature, perhaps, but Boi- 
leau's satires put the finishing blow to these romances, 
which then found their warmest admirers across the Chan- 
nel. When they were exiled from France, they carried 
influence from that country into England, as did the 
emigres into the rest of Europe a century later. 



English Literature, 89 

That it takes time for a fashion to spread is as true in 
literature as it is in milliuery, and it is by no means un- 
usual to be able to follow the course of a literary move- 
ment as one does that of a northeast storm. To take 
examples from current history, Dickens is already some- 
what old-fashioned in England ; no one there writes stories 
now about the jollity of Christmas, or of the red-cheeked 
benevolence which he was fond of describing. When we 
come across a trace of his mannerism in the work of those 
who were his contemporaries, we detect a certain antiquity 
in it ; yet only now is Dickens imitated in France. No one 
can read Daudet without perceiving how much he owes to 
Dickens ; and we are surer to find traces of his influence 
in this country than in England, where the writers have 
before them many newer models. 

In England the classical French stage was first fairly 
imitated by Addison's "Cato" (1713), which Yoltaire 
called the first reasonable play ever written in England ; 
and yet, while English writers were discussing the laws 
of the classic stage, and pondering the question of the 
unities, Milton had, one may almost say, written a Greek 
play, the " Samson Agonistes " (1671),* which his contem- 

* It is curious to notice that Milton published his " Comus " in 1634, 
just after Prynne's " Histrio-Mastix" appeared (1633), with its denuncia- 
tion of masques. May not his " Samson Agonistes " have been meant as 
in some sort a contribution to the discussion concerning plays ? He re- 
ferred in his argument to the question of the unities, and spoke of Greek 
and Italian models. He distinctly reproved indiscriminate opposition to 
the stage. " The apostle Paul himself," he says, " thought it not unwor- 
thy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture ; and 
Parsus, commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book as a trag- 
edy, into acts, distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and a 
song between. Men of highest dignity have labored not a little to be 
thought able to compose a tragedy." He mentions Dionysius the elder, 
Augustus Caesar, Seneca the philosopher. " Gregory Nazianzen, a father 



90 English Literature. 

poraries wholly ignored. After all, they were in a great 
measure right ; for as a dramatic composition the work is 
lifeless, and, moreover, as Milton said in his preface, it was 
not intended for the stage. Its value to us consists in the 
intensity of its expression of a state of things which had 
no pathos to the literary men of his time. However, we 
may agree with Yoltaire so far as to say that reason had 
but little place in the composition of the heroic plays. 
Let us take, for example, this from Lee's " Lucius Junius 
Brutus." It is a bit of dialogue between the father, Lu- 
cius Junius Brutus, and his son, Titus. 

" Brutus. Titus, as I remember, 
You told me you were married. 

Titus. My lord, I did. 

Brittus. To Teramiiita, Tarquin's natural daughter. 

Titus. Most true, my lord, to that poor virtuous maid, 
Your Titus, sir, your most unhappy son. 
Is joined for ever, 

Brutus. No, Titus, not for ever ; 
Not but I know the virgin's beautiful. 
For I did oft converse her when I seemed 
Not to converse at all. Yet more, my son, 
I think her chastely good, most sweetly framed, 
Without the smallest tincture of her father : 
Yet, Titus — Ha ! what, man ? What, all in tears ! 
Art thou so soft that only saying yet 
Has dashed thee thus ? Nay, then I'll plunge thee down, 
Down to the bottom of this foolish stream 
Whose brink thus makes thee tremble. No, ray son, 
If thou art mine, thou art not Teraminta's ; 
Or if thou art, I swear thou must not be — 
Thou shalt not be hereafter. 

of the Church, thought it not unbecoming the sanctity of his person to 
write a tragedy, which he entitled ' Christ Suffering.' " Thus Milton had 
a word for both sides, and he never objected to being in a minority. We 
must remember that he was a child of the Renaissance as well as a 
Puritan. 



English Literature. 91 

Titu8. the gods ! 

Forgive me, blood and duty, all respects 
Due to a father's name — not Teraminta's ? 

Brutus. No, by the gods I swear, not Teraminta's ! 
No, Titus, by th' eternal fates that hang 
I hope auspicious o'er the head of Kome, 
I'll grapple with thee on this spot of earth 
About this theme till one of us fall dead ; 
I'll struggle with thee for this point of honour, 
And tug with Teraminta for thy heart, 
As I have done for Kome." 

DoubtlesvS plays of this kind exercised a bad influence 
on the mere acting of English plays, which is not yet 
dead. They seem to require mouthing, and the stage is 
a great supporter of tradition.* The passage just quoted, 
it is worth noticing, is in blank verse, and the question 
whether plays should be written in couplets or in blank 
verse was in Dryden's time much discussed. Dryden 
argued at great length in favor of rhyme, and wrote in 
rhyme ; then he abandoned it and denounced it ; then he 
tried it again : but the controversy on the matter I will 
not now review. The rhymed play is practically dead, 
but we must remember that we have in Milton's wonder- 
ful blank verse an argument in favor of that form of 
writing which Dryden's contemporaries did not have 
until 1667, and then there was every sort of prejudice at 
work to render them deaf to its harmonies. They did 
have, however, the beautiful blank verse of the older 

* Davenant, who had seen "Hamlet" acted by men ^^ho had received 
Shakspere's instruction, gave hints to Betterton (IGSS-l'ZlO). Betterton 
was praised by both Pepys and Steele. That the heroic plays induced 
heroic acting we may learn from references in the Spectator^ and from the 
delight with which Garrick was welcomed. See, for example, Cumber- 
land's " Memoirs " (Amer. ed.), p. 47. Reference is made to his destruc- 
tion of " the illusions of imposing declamation." 



92 English Literature. 

dramatists,* but their plays, it must be borne in mind, now 
seemed most rude and obsolete. Evelyn in his Diary, 
Nov. 26, 1661, says : " I saw 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' 
played, but now the old plays began to disgust this re- 
fined age, since his Majesties being so long abroad." In 
Pepys we find frequent references to Shakspere. "Mac- 
beth" (Nov. 5, 1664) he thought "a pretty good play," 
and (Dec. 28, 1666) "a most excellent play for variety," 
and (Jan. 7, 1667) "a most excellent play in all respects, 
but especially in divertissement, though it be a deep trag- 
edy ; which is a strange perfection in a tragedy, it being 
most proper here and suitable." With " Hamlet " (Aug. 
31, 1668) he was "mightily pleased." "Midsummer- 
Night's Dream" he thought (Sept. 25, 1662) the most in- 
sipid, ridiculous play " that ever he saw in his life." " The 
Merry Wives of Windsor" (Aug. 15, 1667) did not please 
him " at all, no part of it." " Othello " (Aug. 20, 1666) he 
had " ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play, but 
having so lately read ' The Adventures of Five Houres,' 
it seems a mean thing ;" and (Jan. 1, 1664) "saw the so 
much cried-up play of ' Henry VIII. ;' which, though I 
went with resolution to like it, is so simple a thing made 
up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and 
processions in it, there is nothing in the play good or 
well done." Nov. 7, 1667, he saw the " Tempest," " an old 
play of Shakspere's, . . . the most innocent play that ever I 
saw ; and a curious piece of musique in an echo of half 
sentences, the echo repeating the former half, while the 
man goes on to the latter, which is mighty pretty. The 

* Blank verse had some adherents, however. In Evelyn, Feb. 24, 1664, 
" Dr. Fell, canon of Christ Church, preached before the kmg on 15 Romans, 
2, a very formal discourse and in blank verse, according to his manner ; 
however, he is a good man." Perhaps we have here the explanation of 
Dr. Fell's mysterious unpopularity. 



English Literature. 93 

play has no great wit, but yet good above ordinary 
plays." 

Certainly this is not the way in which Shakspere is re- 
garded by people nowadays,* or at least these views are 
not openly defended, although the late German dramatist 
Benedix, imitating Rumelin, was even more severe in 
his denunciations. Yet Shakspere was frequently acted, 
and almost every one of the dramatists of this time found 
pleasure in writing his plays over for the new genera- 
tion. Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, and 
others shared the same fate. Waller (1682) tried his hand 
at rewriting the fifth act of the "Maid's Tragedy." In 
the prologue he says : 

'' Of all our elder plays 
This and Phil aster have the loudest fame ; 
Great are their faults, and glorious is their flame. 
In both our English genius is expressed ; 
Lofty and bold, but negligently dressed. 

Xc * * . * 

Our lines reformed, and not composed in haste, 
Polished like marble, would like marble last." 

And in the epilogue he says : 

" Nor is't less strange, such mighty wits as those 
Should use a style in tragedy like prose. 
Well-sounding verse, where princes tread the stage, 
Should speak their virtue or describe their rage. 
By the loud trumpet, which our courage aids, 
We learn that sound as well as sense persuades. 
And verses are the potent charms we use, 
Heroic thoughts and virtue to infuse." 

* We may add that it is not the way in which he is now acted. Pepys 
saw of Shakspere " Hamlet," " Othello," " Komeo and Juliet," " Tempest," 
" Taming of the Shrew," " Macbeth," " Merry Wives of Windsor," " Twelfth 
Night," " Midsummer-Night's Dream," " Henry IV.," and " Henry VIII."— 
eleven in all. Of Beaumont and Fletcher, he saw twenty-four plays ; Shir- 
ley, nine ; Ben Jonson, five ; Ford, two ; and Massinger, two. 



94 English Literature. 

Here is one of the king's speeches : 

*' Courage our greatest failings does supply, 
And makes all good, or handsomely we die. 
Life is a thing of common use ; by heaven 
As well to insects as to monarchs given ; 
But for the crown, 'tis a more sacred thing ; 
I'll dying lose it, or I'll live a king. 
Come, Diphilus, we must together walk 
And of a matter of importance talk." 

Compare this with Aspatia's speech in the original play. 
One of the maidens is working the story of " Theseus 
and Ariadne " in tapestry. She is dissatisfied with Ariadne's 

face : 

" Do it by me, 

Do it again by me, the lost Aspatia, 

And you shall find all true but the wild island. 

Suppose I stand upon the sea-beach now, 

Mine arms thus and my hair blown with the wind, 

Wild as that desert : and let all about me 

Be teachers of my story. Do my face 

(If ever thou hadst feeling of a sorrow) 

Thus, thus, Antiphila ; strive to make me look 

Like sorrow's monument ; and the trees about me, 

Let them be dry and leafless ; let the rocks 

Groan with continual surges ; and behind me 

Make all a desolation." * 



* I must apologize to Mr. Lowell for repeating here what he has said 
more forcibly in his article on Dryden. He there quotes the passage given 
above to point the same moral, but there ai'e no other lines in the 
play with half their beauty. Even Theobald, the original hero of the 
"Dunciad,"in the very middle of the last century, was struck by them. 
In his edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (HSO), i. 32, note, he writes: 
"This is one of those Passages, where the Poets, rapt into a glorious en- 
thusiasm, soar on the rapid wings of Fancy. Enthusiasm," he adds, "I 
would call the very essence of Poetry." Is it any wonder that Theobald 
was detested by his contemporaries !•' 



English Literature. 95 

How does that passage compare with such a jingle as 

this ? 

" Evadne's husband 'tis a fault 

To love, a blemish to my thought ; 

Yet twisted with my life, and I, 

That cannot faultless live, will die ! 

Oh ! that some hungry beast would come 

And make himself Aspatia's tomb. 

If none accept me for a prey 

Death must be found some other way. 

In colder regions men compose 

Poison with art ; but here it grows. 

Not long since, walking in the field, 

My nurse and I, we there beheld 

A goodly fruit which tempted me. 

I would have pluck'd ; but trembling, she, 

Whoever eat those berries, cried. 

In less than half an hour dy'd. 

Some god direct me to that bough, 

On which these useful berries grow." 

Shakspere was treated in the same way. Otway worked 
over " Romeo and Juliet " into a play of ancient Rome, 
which he called the "History and Fall of Caius Marius" 
(1680) ; but in justice to our ancestors, let it be said that 
both this play and Waller's revision were failures. The 
fact was, that the stage was dying ; the only way in which 
the drama can exist is as a mirror of life. In the hands 
of the Elizabethan dramatists it did reflect the energy of 
an awakening nation. Marlowe and Shakspere saw about 
them great dreams of conquest, plans of discovery, joy in 
the new learning, the consciousness of religious freedom ; 
and these things they reflected in their plays. The great 
poet is the man who sees the vast currents of thought 
which mark his time, without having his eyes blinded by 
the petty circumstances which dim our eyes to the higher 
vision. The critic, it may be said, is a sort of stammering 



96 English Literature. 

guide who manages to get a glimpse of what the poet 
sees. Those writers who maintain that Bacon was Shak- 
spere might as well affirm that Achilles was Homer.* 
They forget the very essential quality of a poet, which 
is to see the animating principles of things more clearly 
even than those who are taking an active part in them. 
That the possession of knowledge chills the ardor of the 
poet we see by comparing the second part of Goethe's 
"Faust," the great poem of this age, which is animated 
by a sort of scientific fervor, with the first part, which 
he wrote from his impressions as a poet. 

When society becomes divided, when the social scheme 
grows confused, and religious freedom is turned into sec- 
tarianism, and patriotism into partisanship, the drama, 
which at its best reflects only a brightly glowing light, 
fades away. The absence of a single informing spirit is 
seen by the condition of tragedy in Dryden's time, and, 
for that matter, since. In the heroic plays which he 
wrote, an attempt was made to let the single passion of 
love suffice as an animating principle. In the " Indian 
Emperor " we have a mass of conflicting loves before us : 
Cortez falls in love with Montezuma's daughter ; Monte- 
zuma, with Almeria ; Almeria with Cortez, and this is a 
fair sample of the rest. In other plays he wrote in sup- 
port of mere temporary interests : such was " Amboyna," 
16 73, a wretched piece of work, designed simply to in- 
flame the English against the Dutch, with whom war had 
shortly before been declared. It represented some atroci- 
ties that had been committed fifty years before ; and yet 
even here the heroic sentiment prevailed, and the whole 
crime is ascribed to an unholy love. If the love of these 
characters is heroic, what can be said of their heroism ? 

* If Bacon was Shakspei'e, who was Marlowe ? 



English Literature. 97 

Just as poor actors crack their voice in trying to make 
impressive what a really accomplished player would utter 
calmly, so did the writers of this time let their heroes 
break out in every form of extravagance. Some of these 
I have quoted in an earlier part of this book, and others 
may be added. Take this, for instance, from the " Con- 
quest of Granada." Almanzor says : 

" Cut piecemeal in this cause, 
From every wound I should new vigor take : 
And every limb should new Alnianzors make ;" 

or this from Crown's " Juliana " (Crown, Mr. Lowell says, 
was once a student in Harvard College. He was a Xova 
Scotian by birth) : 

" Come, villains, level me right against the clouds, 
And then give fire, discharge my flaming soul, 
Against such saucy destinies as those 
As dare thus basely of my life dispose ; 
Then from the clouds rebounding I will fall, 
And like a clap of thunder tear you all." 

As Addison said in the Spectator, No. 40 : " As our heroes 
are generally lovers, their swelling and blustering upon 
the stage very much recommends them to the fair part of 
their audience. The ladies are wonderfully pleased to see 
a man insulting kings, or affronting the gods, in one scene, 
and throwing himself at the feet of his mistress in an- 
other." 

These inventions were the work of what its owners 
called loit, and of their exclusive possession of that quality 
they spoke with the precise self-complacency which we 
show when we talk about the spirit of the nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and we may say, in general, that the disposition to 
dilate upon the admirable qualities of the present age is 
no more a healthy sign in the public at large than is boast- 
ing in private life, and, moreover, it is most common when 

5 



98 English Literature. 

second-rate work is performed. It is not wllen a soldier 
is charging the enemy that he brags about his bravery, 
and it is not when great work is doing in literature that 
writers take time to stop and call attention to their wit, as 
they did in Dryden's time, or to their general intelligence, 
as we do now. 

It would be unfair to ascribe the tendency in current 
literature to deal with scarcely anything but love-stories 
to the heroic plays : other causes, which I need not enu- 
merate, have contributed to this result ; but yet the exag- 
gerated value given to the manifestation of passion which 
we find in the plays of that time doubtless intensified this 
natural tendency. In Dryden, Lee, and Otway — in their 
serious pieces, that is — we find, as I have said, that love is 
the only great animating principle. In the " Conquest 
of Granada," the " Indian Emperor," " Aureng-Zebe," 
" Venice Preserved," the " Orphan," " Tyrannic Love," 
we find more prominent than anything the impossible 
love - making. In the works of the greatest authors we 
find that life is regarded as a more serious and complex 
thing. Shakspere shows us other passions, ambition, jeal- 
ousy, constancy, misanthropy, etc.; the dramatists who 
lived with him or followed him, like Chapman, even Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, do not confine themselves to this one 
emotion ; and in Scott, what is poorest is the love-making 
of his tepid heroes and heroines. But in the last century 
we find some of the most important of the writers, such as 
Richardson — although, as we shall see, he in general ex- 
presses a very violent reaction from the artificial literature 
of this time — still celebrating the power of love, and the 
domestic tragedy carried down the same tradition, as in 
the " Stranger," for instance, and in the poorer work of 
later days. 

However this may be, the love that was represented in 



English Literature. 99 

these heroic plays was a singular thing, as was not un- 
natural in view of its origin in the later tales of chivalry, 
and its lack of harmony with the condition of society. 
What this was may be seen in the comedies, which I shall 
not treat at length. At some other time it may be possi- 
ble to point out the curious antithesis between comedy and 
ideal poetry, and to show how the two have always ap- 
peared in sharp contrast at the times when literature has 
flourished. The magnificent farce of Aristophanes coin- 
cided in time with the glory of JEschylus and his success- 
ors ; Moliere, as Mr. Symonds says (" Renaissance in 
Italy," V. 309), " portrayed men as they are before an 
audience which welcomed Racine's pictures of men as the 
age conceived they ought to be." But in the drama of 
the Restoration we see no such division of labor. The 
tragedy is, above all things, unreal, and the comedy takes 
its revenge by exaggerating reality. In contrast with the 
metaphysical gallantry of the heroic plays, we have un- 
paralleled grossness. In neither branch do we see the 
main object of the stage — "to show the very age and 
body of the time, his form and pressure," Artistically, 
the wrong was" equal on each side, but the distastefulness 
of the comedy must be our excuse for passing it by. An 
excellent discussion of its main qualities is to be found in 
Beljame's admirable book, " Le Public et les Hommes des 
Lettres," Paris, 1881, to which I have frequently referred. 
That the tragedians of the Restoration felt their in- 
capacity for doing good work can hardly be affirmed.* 
ISTahum Tate, the same who wrote, with Dryden's aid, the 
second part of " Absalom and Achitophel," rewrote " King 

* Dryden, in the preface to " An Evening's Love," Scott's ed., vol. iii., 
p. 218, said : "I had thought ... to have shown ... in what we may 
justly claim precedence of Shakspere and Fletcher, namely, in heroic 
plays." 



lOO English Literature. 

Lear" as his contribution to the general polishing of Shak- 
8pere. The last act he wholly rewrote, and he gave the play 
a happy ending. Lamb, in his "Essay on the Tragedies 
of Shakespeare " (iii. 102) : " Tate has put his hook in 
the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his follow- 
ers, the show-men of the scene, to draw the mighty beast 
about more easily. A happy ending ! — as if the living 
martyrdom that Lear had gone through, — the flaying of 
his feelings alive, — did not make a fair dismissal from the 
stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to 
live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's 
burden after, why all this pudder and preparation, — why 
torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if 
the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre 
again could tempt him to act over again his misused sta- 
tion ! — as if at his years, and with his experience, any- 
thing was left but to die !" 

In order that we may see* the faults of our ancestors 
in their proper light, I will quote a few lines from this 
amended fifth act. Albany says : 

" To your majesty we do resign 
Your kingdom, save what part yourself conferred 
To us in marriage. 

Lear. Is't possible? 

Let the spheres stop their course, the sun make halt, 
The winds be hushed, the seas and fountains rest ; 
All nature pause and listen to the change ;" 

and later, Lear says : 

" Cordelia then shall be a queen, mark that : 
Cordelia shall be a queen ; winds, catch the sound, 
And bear it on your rosy wings to heaven. 
Cordelia is a queen." 

And as for Lear's future, it is assured as follows ; he says 
to Gloster : 



English Literature. loi 

" No, Gloster, . . . 
Thou, Kent and I, retired to some close cell 
Will gently pass our short reserves of time 
In calm reflection on our fortune's past, 
Cheer'd with relation of the prosperous reign 
Of this celestial pair ; thus our remains 
Shall in an even course of thoughts be passed, 
Enjoy the present hour and fear the last." 

And in the final speech of the play, as the green curtain 
was rolling down, Edgar tells Cordelia that 

" Thy bright example shall convince the world 
(Whatever storms of fortune are decreed) 
That truth and virtue shall at last succeed." 

These alterations of Shakspere would, perhaps, seem 
more curious to us, if even we treated Shakspere as a man 
who knew anything about the writing of plays. But the 
text which he left is mauled and tossed about by different 
actors, as if he were a sort of general theatrical provider, 
from whom a bit here and there could be taken, as one 
gets dresses or side-scenes from the people who let those 
things. CoUey Gibber's revision of "Richard III." still 
holds the stage, with its 

" Off with his head ! so much for Buckingham !" 
and, 

" Now, by St. Paul, the work goes bravely on ;" 
and, 

" Richard's himself again." 

And as for " Hamlet," who has ever seen Fortinbras come 
in, bringing with him a flavor of practical life, as if a win- 
dow were opened and fresh air were let into a sick-room ? 
Dryden lent his hand to an alteration of the " Tempest," 
and his version of " Antony and Cleopatra," or " All for 
Love," as he called it, is perhaps his best play. As singular 
as any is the play, " The State of Innocence and Fall of 



102 English Literature. 

Man," a dramatization of Milton's " Paradise Lost." Cer- 
tainly, to our ears, there is something unpardonable in the 
notion of clipping Milton's fine lines into the fashion of the 
couplet, as when Lucifer says : 

" Is this the scat our conqueror has given ? 
And this the dimate we must change for heaven ? 
These regions and this realm my wars have got ; 
This mournful empire is the loser's lot : 
In liquid burning, or on dry, to dwell, 
Is all the sad variety of hell" — I, 1. 

Or when Lucifer (i., 1) says : 

" So, now we are ourselves again an host, 
Fit to tempt fate, once more, for what we lost ; 
To o'erleap the ethereal fence, or if so high 
"We cannot climb, to undermine his sky, 
And blow him up, who justly rules us now, 
Because more strong." 

Or, act ii., scene 1, after an interlude, in which, accord- 
ing to the stage-directions, were expressed the sports of 
the devils : " as flights and dancing in grotesque figures ; 
and a song expressing the change of their condition;, what 
they enjoyed before, and how they fell bravely in battle, 
having deserved victory by their valour, and what they 
would have done if they had conquered." We cannot 
help wishing that Dryden had composed this song. Then 
Adam, " as newly created, laid on a bed of moss and flow- 
ers by a rock," begins thus : 

" What am I ? or from whence ? For that I am 
I know, because I think." ( Cogito, ergo sum.) 

There is no need of going on with this. This cold- 
blooded way of looking at Dryden's poem reminds us of 
the way in which a great many foreign critics speak of Mil- 
ton himself, and there would be nothing easier than to turn 
the " Paradise Lost " into abject i:idicule. In spite of this 



English Literature, 103 

curious compliment — for complimentary this treatment of 
the great epic was meant to be — Dryden had a great ad- 
miration for Milton ; the cool admiration, I mean, which 
one has for a contemporary of whom one wholly disap- 
proves. His inscription beneath the portrait of Milton, in 
Lord Somers's edition, proves this : 

" Three poets, in three distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn : 
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ; 
The next in majesty ; in both the last. 
The force of nature could no further go, ' 
To make the third, she joined the other two." 

Sundry remarks of his in conversation are quoted, and 
here and there in his writings he expressed warm admira- 
tion for his greater contemporary. Yet his admiration 
was tempered by very evident contempt for Milton's in- 
ability or unwillingness to adapt himself to the time in 
which he lived. Still more important than Dryden's per- 
sonal feeling is the knowledge of the opinion of Dryden's 
time, the general opinion of men of letters, concerning Mil- 
ton. Every prejudice ran against him, as a Puritan and a 
defender of regicide, and it would, perhaps, not be an 
exaggeration to say that to those who were interested in 
literature his blank verse must have sounded very much 
as these lines may sound to all but the firmest adherents of 
Walt Whitman (" Leaves of Grass," p. 161, new edition) : 

" Here shall you trace in flowing operation, 
In every state of practical busy movement, the rills of civilization : 
Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by magic, 
The cotton shall be picked almost in the very field ; 
Shall be dried, cleaned, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth before 

you; 
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the new 

ones; 



I04 English Liter'ature. 

You shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then bread 
baked by the bakers ; 

You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and 
on till they become bullion ; 

You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing- 
stick is," etc. 

In a panegyric of Lee's, although one must remember 
that much of the language of panegyrics was no more an 
affidavit than are epitaphs, he says : 

*' Milton did the wealthy mine disclose, 

And rudely cast what you could well dispose : 
He roughly drew, on an old-fashion'd ground, 
A chaos ; for no perfect world was found. 
Till through the heap your mighty genius shined : 
He was the golden ore which you refined." 

As a final extract from "The State of Innocence," I 
shall quote part of Eve's soliloquy, after tasting the fatal 
apple. You will notice the coquetry which Dryden has 
introduced into the scene : 

" I love the wretch ; but stay, shall I afford 
Him part ? already he's too much my lord. 
'Tis in ray power to be a sovereign now ; 
And, knowing more, to make his manhood bow. 
Empire is sweet ; but how if Heaven has spied ; 
If I should die, and He above provide 
Some other Eve, and place her in my stead ? 
Shall she possess his love, when I am dead ? 
No ; he shall eat, and die with me, or live : 
Our equal crimes shall equal fortune give." 

Yet, naturally enough, the whole opera — for it corresponded 
to that as much as to anything we know in the world of 
art or literature — is not wholly made up of such scenes ; 
still, these will show what things were possible in those 
days, just as we may imagine some future student quoting 
these lines to show the excesses of the present period ; 



English Litei'ature. 105 

" Death ! 
Plop. 
The barges down in the river flop: 
Flop, flop, 
Above, beneath, 
From the slimy branches the gray drips drop, 
As they scraggle black on the thin gray sky, 
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly 
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop 
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop, 
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top, 
Plop, flop." * 



The poem ends thus : 



" Ugh, I knew ! 

Ugh! 

So Avhat do I care 

And my head is as empty as air — 

I can do, 

I can dare. 

Plop, plop, 

The barges flop 

Drip, drop. 

I can dare, I can dare ! 

And let myself all run away with my head 

And stop. 

Drop 

Dead, 

Plop, flop. 

Plop." 



* From "A Tragedy," by Theodore Marzials, in his "Gallery of Pigeons 
and Other Poems," p. 85. Mr. Stedman, in his " Victorian Poets," cites these 
lines to show the modei-nness of some later poets. He must have found 
it hard to stop quoting. Here i-s one passage, from a poem called " The 
Trout," p. 68, in which the bard out-Postlethwaites Postlethwaite : 

*' All is a-gray, and the sky's in a glimmer, 
A glimmer as ever a sky should be ; 
Silvery gray, with a silvery shimmer, 
5* 



io6 English Literature. 

Yet to judge of any period by its faults alone would be 
like forming an opinion of a river by its low- water mark 
alone, and would, moreover, give us a very dark view of 
any age. We do not fix Homer's position by the cata- 
logue of ships, or Shakspere's by his extravagant passages, 
and the age of Dryden deserves the same treatment. In 
general, the study of the pathology of literature is of use 
as showing vividly some of the tendencies that have pre- 
vailed at different times. 

As examples of Dryden's finer style, I will quote these 
lines from " Aureng-Zebe " (act iv. sc. l) : 

" When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat. 
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit, 
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. 
To-morrow's falser than the former day. 
Lies worse, and while it says, we shall be blest 
With some new joys, cuts ofE what we possesst. 
Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, 
Yet all hope pleasure in Avhat yet remain. 
And from the dregs of life think to receive 
What the first, sprightly running could not give. 
I'm tir'd with waiting for this chemic gold. 
Which fools us young and beggars us when old." * 

Where shimmers the sun in the hazes a-shimmer, 
The shimmer of river, oh ! river a-shimmer." 

* Cf. " Macbeth " (act v. sc. 5) : 

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
Signifying nothing." 



English Literature. 107 

Or take this from the " GEdipus," written in conjunction 
with Lee, who wrote fine things amid his fustian : 

" Thou coward ! yet 
Art living ? canst not, wilt not find the road 
To the great palace of magnificent death, 
Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors 
Which day and night are still unbarred for all." 

This was written, you notice, in blank verse, and the fact 
that Dryden finally made up his mind in favor of blank 
verse, and wrote in that measure, turned the scale in favor 
of abandoning the couplets in tragedy. As Dryden said, 
in his prologue to " Aureng-Zebe " (1676) ; 

" Xot that it's worse than what before he writ, 
But he has now another taste of wit ; 
And to confess a truth (though out of time;. 
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, rhyme. 
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound, 
And nature flies him like enchanted ground. 
What verse can do he has performed in this, 
Which he presumes the most correct of his ; 
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame 
Invades his breast at Shakspere's sacred name : 
Awed, when he hears his god-like Romans rage, 
He, in a just despair, would quit the stage. 
And, to an age less polish'd, moreunskill'd, 
Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield." 

He wearied of the couplet, and threw the weight of his 
authority on the other side. It was, after all, Dryden's 
critical writings that gave him a position as a representa- 
tive writer. Lee surpassed him in certain kinds of trage- 
dy; Etherege* in comedy; Otway, too, had a quality of 
direct pathos which Dryden never, or but very seldom, ex- 
hibited. 



* See an interesting article on Etherege in the Cornhill Magazine for 
March, 1881. 



io8 English Literature. 

The impression which Dryden left on the minds of his 
contemporaries, and the one which still survives, is this : 
that he was a man of great ability, and a wonderful crafts- 
man. If he had been born in more poetical times he would 
have brought to the service of literature the same ability, 
and the sounder fervor of other men would have kept 
him from frittering away his power over such poor mate- 
rial as the heroic plays. We notice everywhere in his 
satirical and didactic poems his exceptional vigor. I have 
given some examples of this, and there are others : 

" Death, in itself is nothing ; but we fear 
To be we know not what, we know not where." 

*' The secret pleasure of the generous act 
Is the great mind's great bribe." 

"Forgiveness to the injured does belong; 
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong." 

Or such poetical touches as we find in the blank verse : 

" I feel death rising higher still and higher 
Within my bosom ; every breath I fetch 
Shuts up my life within a shorter compass, 
And, like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less 
And less each pulse, till it be lost in air." 

Antony, in " All for Love," says : 

" For I am now so sunk from what I was, 
Thou find'st me at my lowest water-mark. 
The rivers that ran in and raised my fortunes 
Are all dried up, or take another course : 
What I have left is from my native spring ; 
I've a heart still that swells in scorn of Fate, 
And left me to my banks." 

Here is one more picturesque passage : 

" You ne'er must hope again to see your princess, 
Except as prisoners view fair walks and streets, 
And careless passengers going by their grates." 



English Liter ahtre. 109 

Compare Dryden's best lines with some extracts from 

Lee's various plays. 
From " CEdipus :" 

"May the sun never dawn, 
The silver moon be blotted from her orb, 
And for an universal rout of nature 
Through all the inmost chambers of the sky 
May there not be one spark, 
But gods meet gods and jostle in the dark." 

This is the sort of writing which has given Lee his repu- 
tation for writing fustian, but he could do better than this, 
and that he did so is undeniable, as these extracts will show. 
From " Theodosius :" 

" Leontini, Thou art the only comfort of my age ; 
Like an old tree I stand among the storms, 
Thou art the only limb that I have left me ; 
My dear green branch, and how I prize thee, child. 
Heaven only knows ! Why dost thou kneel and weep ?" 

*' Varanes. Far be the noise 

Of kings and crowds from us, whose gentle souls 
Our kinder stars have steer'd another way. 

Free as the forest birds we'll pair together. 

* -sfr ^ * -se- 

Together drink the crystal of the stream. 
Or taste the yellow fruit which autumn yields ; 
And when the golden evening calls us home, 
Wing to our downy nest, and sleep till morn." 

" Theodosius. Oh, were I proof against the darts of love, 
And cold to beauty as the marble lover 
That lies without a thought upon his tomb, 
Would not this glorious dawn of life run through me, 
And waken death itself ?" 

" Varanes, Though I have lived a Persian, I will fall 
As fair, as fearless, and as full resolved 
As any Greek or Roman of 'em all." 

'From "Caesar Borgia :" 



no English LiteratuTe. 

*' MachiaveUi. The dead are only happy and the dying : 
The dead are still, and lasting slumbers hold 'em : 
He who is near his death, but turns about, 
Shuffles awhile to make his pillow easy, 
Then slips into his shroud and sleeps for ever." 

And this, 

" MachiaveUi. The occasion gives new life, fresh vigour to him ; 
E'en at the very verge of bottomless death. 
He stands and smiles as careless and undaunted 
As wanton swimmei'S on a river's brink 
Laugh at the rapid stream." 

From " The Rival Queens :" 

" Alexander, Oh, she is gone ! the talking soul is mute ! 
She's hushed, no voice or music now is heard ! 
The power of beauty is more still than death ; 
The roses fade, and the melodious bird 
That waked their sweets has left them now for ever." 

*' Alexander. How dead ! Hephaestion dead ! alas, the dear . 
Unhappy youth ! — But he sleeps happy, 
I must wake for ever : — This object, then. 
This face of fatal beauty, 
Will stretch my lids with vast, eternal tears." 

From " Mithridates :" 

" Arm, arm, great Mithridates, the big war 
Comes with vast leaps, bounding o'er all the East, 
Which crouches to the torrent." 

From " Sophonisba :" 

" Why do you stop ? Still as a statue low 
I stand, nor shall the wind presume to blow. 
Speak and it shall be night : not one shall dare 
To sigh, tho' on the i^ack he tortured were, 
Nor for his soul whisper a dying prayer." 

These two extracts from " Mithridates " are also worthy of 

note : 

" Masinissa. Grant me, ye gods, before the hand of death 
Comes like eternal ni^ht with her dark wing 



English Literature. in 

To bar the comfortable light for ever 
From these my aged eyes ; 0, let me see 
A grandchild of my prince's sacred blood,N 
To call him mine, to feel him in my arms, 
To hear his innocent talk, and see him smile, 
While I tell stories of his father's valour, 
Which he in time must learn to imitate : 
Grant me but this, you gods, and make an end, 
Soon as you please, of this old happy man." 

" Ziphanes. Go then, thou setting star ; take from these eyes 

***** 
take those languishing pale fires away. 
And leave me to the wide dark den of death." 

It seems incredible that a man who wrote lines like these 

could compose such a passage as this : 

" Wheels, stones, and all the subtlest pains of hell, 
With burning, reddest plagues about 'em dwell. 
About 'em ! in 'em, through 'em, let 'em run, 
And flames with flames involved be swallowed down." 

Yet, while we find occasional good lines in Dryden's 
pliays, there is no one play, either tragedy or comedy, that 
deserves high praise. The naost interesting part of them 
is the prologue, or the introductory essay, in which he used 
to discuss the best method of working, or some of the 
theories which were suggested by his critics or by himself.* 
I have given some examples, and it would be easy to find 
many more. We may leave this, however, and take into 
consideration some of the other sides of the drama. In 
the first place, all the tragedies were on the sufferings of 
kings ; and, as Dryden said in his preface to the " Annus 
Mirabilis," in that poem was " incomparably the best sub- 
ject I ever had, excepting only the Royal Family;" and 

* He adopted the custom, doubtless, from the French tragedians, espe- 
cially Corneille, who wrote a preface to each of his plays, explaining and 
defending his views. The dedications to the rich are the same in both, 
and for the same reason. 



112 English Literature. 

royal families were uniformly the subjects of these new 
plays. This was also the case in the French drama. Yet 
in the preface to his "Don Sanche " (1651) we find Cor- 
neille getting a glimpse of a truth which has since become 
a truism. He says: " Tragedy should excite both pity and 
fear. . . . Now since it is true that the latter feeling is 
only excited within us when we see our equals (sem- 
hlahles) suffering, when their misfortunes make us dread 
like sufferings for ourselves, is it not true that it might be 
more strongly excited by the sight of misfortunes befall- 
ing people in our own station of life, whom we resemble 
in every particular, than by those which drive from their 
thrones great monarchs, with whom we sympathize only 
so far as we are susceptible of the passions that cast 
them into this abyss, which cannot always be the case ?" 
And elsewhere : " I venture to imagine that those who 
limited this sort of poem [the tragedy] to illustrious per- 
sons, did so only because they thought that the fortune of 
kings and princes was alone capable of such an action as 
the great master of the art prescribes. However, when he 
begins to discuss the qualities necessary for the hero of a 
tragedy, he does not touch upon his birth, and speaks simply 
of his life and character. He demands a hero who shall be 
neither vicious nor faultless ; he must be persecuted by 
some one with whom he is in close relations; he must be in 
danger of dying at the hand of some one whose duty it 
should be to save him — and I do not see why all this 
can happen only to one of royal birth, or that a lower 
station is exempt from these misfortunes." Voltaire, in 
his preface to the play, held up the cause of conservatism 
by saying that doubtless very sad misfortunes might befall 
simple citizens, " but they distress us much less than those 
which happen to monarchs, whose fate involves that of 
nations. A citizen may be assassinated as Pompey was, 



English Literature. 1 1 3 

but the death of Pompey will always have a very different 
effect from that of a private citizen. If you treat the 
interests of a bourgeois in the style of Mithridates, you are 
guilty of impropriety ; and if you represent a terrible ad- 
venture befalling an ordinary man, in a familiar style, this 
diction, which suits the hero, ill-becomes the incidents." 

The first writer of any prominence who chose any one 
for his subject outside of a royal family was Otway, 
whose "Orphan" (I68O) and "Venice Preserved-" (1682) 
long held the stage. The language of these plays is en- 
tirely different from that of Dryden's, and, as we shall 
see, is of itself worthy of attention ; but what I wish to 
mention, first of all, is the introduction of this new hero, 
and the abandonment of the king. This change was an 
indication of what was going to take place in the next 
century, and is but one of the instances which we shall 
find of the growth of democracy in literature. At this 
time, however, nothing of the sort was conjectured, and 
Otway, doubtless, wrote about private people from no 
desire to revolutionize letters. The poor man had but 
little chance to think of anything but the day before him, 
or, more probably, the night that was before him, and he 
manufactured gross comedies, and wrote two of the most 
memorable plays of the time. 

These extracts may illustrate his manner. This is from 
" Venice Preserved :" 

" Jaffier. 'Tis now, I think, three years we've lived together. 

Belvidera. And may no fatal minute ever part us, 
Till reverend grown, for age and love, we go 
Down to our graves, as our last bed, together ; 
Then sleep in peace till an eternal morning. 
Jaffier. When will that be? 
. Belvidera. I hope long ages hence, 

Jaffier. Have I not hitherto (I beg thee tell me 



1 14 English Literature, 

Thy very fears) used thee with tender'st love ? 
Did e'er my soul rise up in wrath against thee ? 
Did I e'er frown when Belvidera smiled, 
Or, by the least unfriendly word, betray 
Abating passion ? Have I ever wronged thee ? 

Belvidera. No. 

Jaffier. Has my heart, or have my eyes e'er wandered 
To any other woman ? 

Belvidera. Never, never — 

I were the worst of false ones, should I accuse thee." 

:{c H< H< >l< # 

Jaffier blesses her : 

" Then hear me, bounteous Heaven ; 
Pour down your blessings on this beauteous head, 
Where everlasting sweets are always springing, 
With a continual, giving hand ; let peace, 
Honour, and safety always hover round her; 
Feed her with plenty, let her eyes ne'er see 
A sight of sorrow, nor her heart know mournings : 
Crown all her days with joy, her nights with rest, 
Harmless as her own thought ; and prop her virtue 
To bear the loss of one that too much loved. 
And comfoi't her with patience in our parthig. 

Belvidera. How, parting, parting ? 

Jaffier. Yes, forever parting ; 

I have sworn, Belvidera, by yon Heaven, 
That best can tell how much I lose, to leave thee. 
We part this hour forever. . 

Belvidera. Oh, call back 

Your cruel blessing; stay with me and curse me!" 



This from the " Orphan 



." 



" For all is hushed, as Nature were retired, 
And the perpetual motion standing still : 
So much she from her work appears to cease, 
And every warring element's at peace. 
All the wild herds are in their coverts couch'd ; 
The fishes to their banks or ooze repaiv'd, 
And to the murmurs of the waters sleep ; 



English Literature. 115 

The feeling air's at rest, and feels no noise, 
Except of some soft breaths among the trees, 
Rocking the harmless birds that rest upon them." 

" Wished morning's come ! and now upon the plains 
And distant mountains where they feed the flocks, 
The happy shepherds leave their homely huts, 
And with their pipes proclaim the new-born day. 
The lusty swain comes with his well-fill'd scrip 
Of healthful viands, which, when hunger calls. 
With much content and appetite he eats. 
To follow in the fields his daily toil. 
And dress the grateful glebe, that yields him fruits. 
The beasts that under the warm hedges slept. 
And weathered out the cold bleak night, are up. 
And looking towards the neighb'ring pastures, raise 
Their voice, and bid their fellow-brutes good-morning ; 
The cheerful birds, too, in the tops of trees 
Assemble all in choirs and with their notes 
Salute, and welcome up the rising sun." 

Id., iv. 1. 

For his heroics, vide " Orphan," iii. 1. 

" Castalio. Who's there ? 

Ernesto. A friend. 

Castalio. If thou art so, retire, 

And leave this place, for I would be alone. 

Ernesto. Castalio ! My lord, why in this posture. 
Stretched on the ground ? Your honest, true old servant, 
Your poor Ernesto cannot see you thus ; 
Rise, 1 beseech you. 

Castalio. If thou art Ernesto, 

As by thy honesty, thou seem'st to be. 
Once leave me to my folly. 

Ernesto. I can't leave you, 

And not the reason know of your disorders. 
••;: * * * * 

Castalio. Thou can'st not serve me. 

Ernesto. Why ? 

Castalio. Because my thoughts 

Are full of woman ; thou, poor wretch, art past them. 



ii6 English Literature. 

Ernesto. I hate the sex, 

Castalio. Then I'm thy friend, Ernesto. 

I'd leave the world for him that hates a woman. 
Woman, the fountain of all human frailty ! 
What mighty ills have not been done by woman ? 
Who was't betrayed the capitol ? A woman. 
Who lost Mark Antony the world ? A woman. 
Who was the cause of a long ten years' war. 
And laid at last old Troy in ashes ? Woman, 
Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman !" etc. 

Dr. Johnson said of one of his plays, the " Orphan," 
that it was " the work of a man not attentive to decency, 
nor zealous for virtue ; but of one who conceived forci- 
bly, and drew originally, by consulting nature in his own 
breast." 

This secret Otway had, and he shows a poetical quality, 
too, in the "Poet's Complaint of his Muse," " part of which 
I do not understand ; and in that which is less obscure I 
find little to commend. . . . The numbers are harsh," as 
Dr. Johnson said, but there is vigor in the following open- 
ing lines of the ode : 

" To a high hill where never yet stood tree, 

Where only heath, coarse feim, and furzes grow, 

Where, nipped by piercing air. 
The flocks in tattered fleeces hardly graze, 

Led by uncouth thoughts and care. 
Which did too much his pensive mind amaze, 
A wandering bard, whose Muse was crazy grown. 
Cloyed with the nauseous follies of the buzzing town, 
Came, look'd about him, sighed, and laid him down. 
'Twas far from any path, but where the earth 
Was bare and naked all as at her birth. 
When by the Word it first was made. 
Ere God had said : — 
Let grass, and herbs, and every green thing grow 
With fruitful herbs after their kinds, and it was so. 



English Liter at are. 117 

The whistling winds blew fiercely round his head; 

Cold was his lodging, hard his bed ; 

Aloft his eyes on the wide heavens he cast, 

Where, we are told, peace only is found at last ; 

And as he did its hopeless distance see, 

Sighed deep and cried, ' How far is peace from rae !' " 

These lines will never be quoted for their harmony, but 
they are curious as a vivid description of scenery, at a 
time when scenery was as little studied as electricity. As 
a specimen of the way nature was frequently addressed, 
these lines may be noticed : 

"Weep then, once fruitful vales, and spring with yew ! 
Ye thirsty barren mountains, weep with dew ! 

* * * * 4fr 

Let mournful cypress, with each noxious weed. 
And baneful venoms, in their place succeed ! 
Ye purling, querulous brooks, o'ercharged with grief, 
Haste swiftly to the sea for more relief," etc, 
—John Pomfret, a pastoral, " Essay on the Death of Queen Mary," 1694. 

This, I take it, is not an unfair example of the usual 
way of regarding nature at this time.* As Otway's poem 
goes on, it becomes very obscure, but the beginning at 
least is fine. 

IV. To make a change from this subject to one akin to 
it, let us for a moment look at the songs of the drama of 
the Restoration. Here we come across a number of in- 
stances of the French influence. Yet it is worthy of no- 
tice that many of the songs in Dryden's plays are transla- 
tions of French songs of the sixteenth century, the other 
models, the lyrics of the great English dramatists, being 
neglected. As an example of the change, we may com- 

* For another example of the conventional treatment of nature, see 
Congreve's pastoral, "The Mourning Muse of Alexis," also on the death 
of Queen Mary ; and Thackeray's amusing comments on it, in his " Eng- 
lish Humourists." 



1 1 8 English Literature. 

pare the song which Rochester put into his version of 
Beaumont and Fletcher's " Valentinian," with the one in 
the original. Here is Rochester's : 

Nymph. 
" Injurious charmer of my vanquished heart, 
Canst thou feel love, and yet no pity know ? 
Since of myself from thee I cannot part. 
Invent some gentle way to let me go ; 
For what with joy thou didst obtain, 

And I with more did. give. 
In time will make thee false and vain, 
And me unlit to live." 

Shepherd. 
" Frail angel, that wouldst have a heart forlorn, 
With vain pretence Falsehood therein might lie, 
Seek not to cast wild shadows o'er your scorn. 
You cannot sooner change than I can die ; 
To tedious life I'll never fall. 

Thrown from thy dear-lov'd breast ; 
He merits not to live at all. 
Who cares to live unblest." 

Beaumont and Fletcher's song ran thus ; 

" Heai', ye ladies that despise, 

What the mighty love has done ; 
Fear examples, and be wise : 

Fair Calisto was a nun ; 
Leda, sailing on the stream 

To deceive the hopes of man, 
Love accounting but a dream, 

Doated on a silver swan ; 
Danae in a brazen tower. 
Where no love was, loved a shower. 

" Hear, ye ladies that are coy. 

What the mighty love can do ; 
Fear the fierceness of the boy : 

The chaste moon he makes to woo ; 
Vesta, kindling holy fires, 

Circled round about with spies. 



English Literature. 119 

Never dreaming loose desires, 

Doting at the altar dies ; 
Ilion, in a short hour, higher 
He can build and once more lire." 

You will notice the tone of gallantry in Rochester's, 
which is attractive enough, although it lacks the sort of 
musical dignity of the other. Indeed, as we all know, the 
cavaliers brought down the traditions of the early song- 
writers in a way that is sure to win admiration, but even 
the best of their work lacks the sort of classical finish 
which we find in the occasional lyrics of the drama- 
tists, such as, for instance, Peele's "His golden locks time 
hath to silver turned ;" Green's " Ah, what is love ? It i^ 
a jDretty thing ;" Dekker's " Art thou poor, yet hast thou 
golden slumbers ;" Nash's " Spring, the sweet spring ;" 

and his 

" Adieu ; farewell earth's bliss. 
This world uncertain is : 
Fond are life's lustful joys ; 
Death proves them all but toys. 
None from his darts can fly : 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us ! 
* ■» * -H- * 

" Beauty is but a flower, 
Which wrinkles will devour : 
Brightness falls from the air ; 
Queens have died )'oung and fair ; 
Dust hath closed Helen's eye ; 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us !" 

To say nothing of Shakspere's songs, Ben Jonson's, and 
the best of Beaumont and Fletcher's, as, 

" Koses, their sharp spines being gone, 
Not royal in their smells alone. 
But in their hue." . 



I20 English Literature. 

The earlier cavalier songs are good, such as those of 

Lovelace : 

" When love with unconfined whigs ;" 

and the one " To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars :" 

" Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind ;" 

or " To Althea from Prison ;" but in the play -writers we 
lind a new quality, which would make it nearly impossi- 
ble, for instance, to confound one of the songs of the later 
time with those that preceded them. 

Take, for example, this one, by Congreve : 

" See, see, she wakes, Sabina. wakes ! 
• And now the sun begins to rise; 

Less glorious is the morn that breaks 

From his bright beams than her fair eyes, 

" With light united, day they give. 
But different fates 'ere night fulfil ; 
How many by his warmth will live ! 
How many will her coldness kill ! 

This one, by Etherege : 

"It is not, Celia, in your power 

To say how long our love will last ; 
• It may be we, within this hour, 

May lose those joys we now do taste; 
The blessed, who immortal be, 
From change of love are only free. 

" Then since we mortal lovers are, 

Ask not how long our love will last ; 
But, while it does, let vis take care 

Each minute be with pleasure past. 
Were it not madness to deny 
To live, because we're sure to die ? 

"Fear not, though love and beauty fail, 
My reason shall my heart direct : 
Your kindness now shall then prevail, 
And passion turn into respect. 



English Literature. 121 



Celia, at worst, you'll in the end 
But chano;e a lover for a friend." 



This, by Sedley : 



"Not, Celia, that I juster am 
Or better than the rest ; 
For I would change each hour, like them, 
Were not my heart at rest. 

"But I am tied to very thee 
By every thought I have : 
Thy face I only care to see, 
Thy heart I only crave. 

" All that in woman is adored 
In thy dear self I find — 
For the whole sex can but afford 
The handsome and the kind. 

" Why, then, should I seek further store 
And still make love anew ? 
When change itself can give no more 
'Tis easy to be true." 



And this, by Rochester : 



" All my past life is mine no more. 

The flying hours are gone ; 

Like transitory dreams giv'n o'er 

Whose images are kept in store 

By memory alone. 

" The time that is to come is not; 
How, then, can it be mine ? 
The present moment's all my lot, 
And that as fast as it is got, 
Phillis, is only thine ! 

"Then talk not of inconstancy, 
False hearts, and broken vows ; 
If I, by miracle can be 
This live-long minute true to thee, 
'Tis all that Heaven allows." 
6 



122 English Literature. 

We notice, in the first place, command of rhythms ; 
take, for instance, this from one of Dryden's songs (from 
" King Arthur ") : 

" Sight, the mother of desires, 

What charming objects dost thou yield ! 

'Tis sweet when tedious night expires, 
To see the rosy morning gild 

The mountain-tops and paint the fields. 

But when Clarinda comes in sight. 

She makes the summer's day more bright, 

And w4ien she goes away, 'tis night ;" 

or this from " Cleomenes ; or, the Sj^artan Hero " (1692) : 

" No, no, poor suffering heart, no change endeavour ; 
Choose to sustain the smart, rather than have her; 
My ravish'd eyes behold such charms about her, 
I can die with her, but not live without her ; 
One tender sigh of hers to see me languish. 
Will more than pay the price of my past anguish; 
Beware, cruel fair, how you smile on me, 
'Twas a kind look of yours that has undone me. 

*' Love has in store for me one happy minute. 
And she will end my pain who did begin it ; 
Then no day void of bliss, of pleasure, leaving, 
Ages shall slide away without perceiving : 
Cupid shall guard the door, the more to please us, 
And keep out time and death, when they would seize us ; 
Time and death shall depart, and say, in flying. 
Love has found out a way to live by dying." 

Charming as these verses of Dryden's are, they bear to 
our ears the marks of the decay of literature ; and yet, 
while more vivid proofs might easily be found of the gen- 
eral inferiority, these lines of Mrs. Behn's on the death of 
Waller, which outdo the usual extravagance even of epi- 
taphs, Avill show how well the age thought of itself : 



English Literature. 123 

** Long did the untun'd world in ignorance stray, 
Producing nothing tliat was great and gay, 
Till taught by thee the true poetic way ; 
Rough were the tracks before, dull and obscure, 
Nor pleasure nor instruction could procure ; 
Their thoughtless labours could no passion move, 
Sure, in that age, the poets knew not love. 
That charming god, like apparitions, then. 
Was only talked on and ne'er seen by men. 
Darkness was o'er the Muses' land display'd, 
And e'en the chosen tribe unguided strayed, 
Till by thee rescued from the Egyptian night, 
They now look up and view the god of light, 
That taught them how to love and how to write." 

V. The extracts I have given will make it clear that 
the English stage was not in a healthy state at the end of 
the seventeenth century. I have passed over the most 
objectionable side on account of the impossibility of pre- 
senting it fairly. Mere denunciation of the faults of the 
English comedy of the Restoration would be idle, and 
since in the history of literature it was wholly sterile and 
left behind it no successor we may safely leave it un- 
touched. The later development of the tragedies, as we 
have seen them in Lee and Otway, served as a model for 
succeeding playwrights in the next century ; but the com- 
edy forms a separate chapter, without a sequel, and what 
put an end to it, as much as anything, was a little volume 
of 288 pages, by the Rev. Jeremy Collier, entitled, "A 
Short Yiew of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Eng- 
lish Stage : Together with the Sense of Antiquity upon 
this Argument." This book appeared in 1698, running 
through three editions in the year of its publication. 

The faults which it condemned at last brought their 
own punishment. When, twenty years before, Bunyan, 
in describing Vanity Fair, said, " at this Fair is at all times 



124 English Literature. 

to be seen Jugglings, Cheats, Games, Plays, Fools, Apes, 
Knaves, and Rogues, and that of every kind," it was ap- 
parent that he expressed the opinion of the Puritans con- 
cerning the stage ; and for their opinion no one cared at 
all. No Puritan would have been listened to by the general 
public of those who professed an interest in letters. This 
denunciation of plays would have meant in those times 
political prejudice and religious bigotry. Collier, how- 
ever, had this great advantage, that he was an ardent Tory, 
who was out of favor at court for his refusal to take the 
oath of allegiance to William after the Revolution of 1688, 
and had already been imprisoned in Newgate for his po- 
litical writings. More than this, besides sturdily main- 
taining the rights of James II., he had given religious 
consolation to Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkyns 
when they were condemned to death for plotting against 
William ; and for giving these men absolution at the foot 
of the scaffold he had been blamed by the bishops, sum- 
moned ^before the court of the King's Bench^ and for his 
contumacy in not recognizing the authority of this court 
he had been outlawed. This was the time he chose for 
stirring up another hornet's nest, by denouncing the most 
popular authors. He was, at any rate, sure not to be called 
a Puritan. 

With regard to the immorality of the stage he had 
abundance of testimony, but he puts on the witness-stand 
only the works of Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, D'LTrfey, 
and Vanbrugh, and generally their latest writings, and 
from these examples proves his statements. He attacked 
their profanity with equal ardor and less judgment. For 
instance, in support of his charge that the writers, in their 
abuse of religion and Holy Scripture, " don't stop short 
of blasphemy," he says that ''in the close of the play 
[* Mock Astrologer '] they make sport with Apparitions and 



English Literature, 125 

Fiends. One of the devils sneezes, upon this they give 
him the blessing of the occasion, and conclude he has got 
cold by being too long out of the fire.'' 

What Collier calls "the most extraordinary passage is 
this : 

" ' Carlos, For your comfort, marriage, they say, is holy. 

*' ' Sancho, Ay, and so is martyrdom, as tlieymy, hut both of them are good 
for just nothing but to make an end of a m.an''s life^ 

" I shall make no reflections upon this. There needs no 
reading upon a monster. 'Tis shown enough by its own 
deformity." 

Congreve, or, at least, one of his characters, spoke 
of Solomon as "wise by his judgment in astrology." 
" Thus," says Collier, " the wisest prince is dwindled into 
a gypsy !" 

Sir Sampson Sampson is reminded of the strongest Sam- 
son of the name, " who pulled an old house over his head 
at last." " Here you have sacred history burlesqued, and 
Sampson once more brought into the house of Dagon to 
make sport for the Philistines !" 

Every charge that he brings is supported by reference 
to all the plays of Greece and Rome, and while he shows 
blasphemy, as we have just seen, in English plays, it is 
part of his business to prove the absence of this in the 
plays of the ancients. But " there is one ill sentence in 
Sophocles. Philoctetes calls the gods rafco/, and libels their 
administration. This officer, we must understand, was left 
upon a solitary island, ill-used by his friends, and harassed 
with poverty and ulcers, for ten years together. These, 
under the ignorance of paganism, were trying circum- 
stances, and take off somewhat of the malignity of the 
complaint." 

He undertakes to prove that priests were ridiculed by 
the comic writers, and he even goes so far as to abuse Dry- 



126 English Literature. 

den because in " Cleomenes " one of the characters speaks 
disrespectfully of the Egyptian god Apis : 

" Accurs'd be thou, grass-eating, foddered god ! 
Accurs'd thy temple ! More accurs'd thy priests !" 

He devotes thirteen pages to illustrating the manner in 
which English priests are turned to ridicule, and twenty- 
eight to show how priests were treated by Homer, Yergil, 
the Greek tragedians, Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, 
Corneille, Moliere (who "bring no priests of any kind 
upon the stage"), Racine, Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher; and then he goes on to prove, upon their 
accounts, " what right the clergy have to regard and fair 
usage." That they have received this elsewhere he makes 
clear by illustrations from the conduct of the Jews, the 
Egyptians, the Persian Magi, the Druids of Gaul, the 
priesthood of Rome, of France, of Hungary, Muscovy, 
Spain, Italy, etc. ; and with every new point he lugs in 
the ancients and the rest of Europe.* 

All of this seems sufficiently wide of the mark, and to 
tend simply to confuse what was very clear — namely, the 
corruption of the stage ; yet, although Collier lacked all 
sympathy with artistic principles, and overshot his mark 
by putting all the blame for fashionable viciousness upon 
the stage, there are ^igor, manliness, and intelligence in 
the book. To be sure, he blames Congreve for calling a 
coachman Jehu, and a parson Mr. Prig, and criticises 



* The vahie of classical precedent at this time is most striking, though, 
perhaps, it is nowhere more vividly illustrated than here. With every 
new point the Greek and Roman writers are invoked to strengthen his 
arguments or to refute those of his enemies. No sooner have they passed 
off the stage in one paragraph than they are called back to dispose of 
something else. One is reminded of those clocks in which, every time the 
hour strikes, the apostles march out of one door, stalk across the stage, 
and then go in again. 



English Literature. 127 

Vanbrugh for neglecting the three unities ; but his gen- 
eral point is clear beneath even his accumulation of foreign 
testimony. 

Naturally, the book excited great wrath. Almost all 
of those attacked directly, or by implication, made retort, 
but Congreve, who was distinctly a man of wit, showed 
none of it in his answer ; Vanbrugh did no better, and 
Collier, who certainly had the right on his side, had dis- 
tinctly the best of the protracted arguments.* Dryden, 
almost if not' quite alone, forbore to make reply, but in 
the preface to his ''Fables" (1700) he said: "I shall say the 
less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me 
justly ; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and ex- 
pressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, 
profaneness, or immorality. If he be my enemy, let him 
triumph ; if he be my friend, as I have given him no per- 

* John Dennis said : ^' Now there is no Nation in Europe, as has been 
observed above a thousand times, that is so generally addicted to the 
Spleen, as the English, and what is apparent to any observer, from the 
reigning distemper of the Clime, which is inseparable from the Spleen ; 
from that gloomy and sullen temper, which is generally spread through 
the nation, from that natural discontentedness which makes us so uneasie 
to one another, because we are so uneasie to ourselves : and lastly, from our 
jealousies and suspicions, which makes us so uneasie to ourselves and to 
one another, and have so often made us dangerous to the Government, 
and by consequence to ourselves. Now the English being more splenetick 
than other people, and consequently more thoughtful and more reflecting, 
and therefore more scrupulous in allowing their passions, and consequently 
things seldom hapning in life to move their passions so agreeably to their 
reasons, as to entertain and please them ; and there being no true and sin- 
cere pleasure unless these passions are thus moved, nor any happiness 
without pleasure, it follows, that the English to be happy, have more need 
than other people of something that will raise their passions in such a 
manner, as shall be agreeable to their reasons, that by consequence they: 
have more need of the drama." — Usefulness of the Stage (1698), p. 12. 
These are not the words of a formidable antagonist. 



128 English Literature. 

sonal occasion to be otherwise, he Avill be glad of my re- 
pentance, . . . Yet it were not difficult to prove that in 
many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses ; 
and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry of 
which they were not guilty ; besides that he is too much 
given to horse-play in his raillery ; and comes to battle 
like a dictator from the plough. I will not say 'The 
zeal of God's house has eaten him up ;' but I am sure it 
has devoured some part of his good manners and civility." 
And he adds : " He has lost ground at the latter end of 
the day, by pursuing his point too far : . . . from immoral 
plays to no plays." * 

* In 1'719, a certain Bedford, chaplain to the Duke of Bedford, repub- 
lished a book that first appeared in 1V06, called "A Serious Remon- 
strance in behalf of the Christian religion against the horrid blasphemies 
and impieties which are still used in the English playhouse." Here is a 
sample of his arguments : " When God was pleased to vindicate His own 
honour, and show that he would not be thus affronted, by sending a most 
dreadful storm . . . yet, so great was the obstinacy of the stage under 
such signal judgments, that we are told the actors did in a few days after 
entertain again their audience with the ridiculous plays of the ' Tempest ' 
and ' Macbeth,' and that at the mention of the chimneys being blown 
down the audience were pleased to clap at an unusual length . . . as if 
they would outbrave the judgment, throw Providence out of the chair, 
place the devil in his stead, and provoke God once more to plead his own 
cause by sending another calamity." 

He accused playwriters of restoring Pagan worship by their reference 
to Cupid, Jupiter, Diana, etc., of encouraging witchcraft or magic; "for," 
he says, " by bewitching, magick, and enchanting, they only signify some- 
thing which is most pleasant and desirable." He even detected blasphemy, 
in Addison's " Cato," in Hnes like these: 

"This, this is life indeed ! life worth preserving! 

Such life as Juba never felt till now !" 
and 

" My joy ! My best beloved ! My only wish !" 

Thirty years later, William Law, in his treatise, " On the Absolute Tin- 



English Liter atitre. 129; 

That was scarcely an exaggeration of the result of the 
book. Societies for the encouragement of good morals 
took courage ; King William renewed the orders he had 
already given to prevent the licensing " any plays con- 
taining expressions contrary to religion and good man- 
ners ;" Queen Anne, at the beginning of her reign, helped 
the same cause. The erring comic writers purged their 
published works of some of their offensiveness ; and their 
later writings showed a new regard for decorum. Indeed, 
the popular feeling was so high that they had to shorten 
sail. The old Puritan spirit was revived, and the closing of 
the playhouses was urged in various quarters, which would 
have been but again to let one excess take the place of an- 
other. This bigotry would but have insj)ired another out- 
break of indecency. Fortunately there were men living 
who were able to take sounder views, and to make a sort 
of compromise between the wits, as they called themselves, 
and the public. Sir Richard Blackmore, an absolutely 
uninspired poet, the Tupper of his age, had even preceded 
Collier in his attack on the corruption of the age, and had 
written voluminous epic poems for this excellent reason, 
" that the young gentlemen and ladies w^ho are delighted 
with poetry might have a useful, at least a harmless, en- 
tertainment," such as they could not get from other poets ; 
but the remedy he prescribed no one could swallow^-hjs 
books were practically unread. Addison was the man who 
reconciled literature and life. Let us see how he did this, 
and, first, how he was prepared for this arduous task. 



lawfulness of the Stage," said that, in going to the theatre, " You are as cer- 
tainly going to the devil's triumph as if you were going to those old sports 
w'here people committed murder and offered Christians to be devoured by 
wild beasts." And at the Shakspere Jubilee (I'zeQ), the heavy rains were 
attributed to the vengeance of heaven: vide Lecky, "England in the 
Eighteenth Century," i. 594, 595. 

6* 



130 English Literature, 



CHAPTER IV. 

I. Addison was born in 1672 ; his father was a clergy- 
man, and, in 1683, Dean of Lichfield. At school he be- 
came intimate with Steele. The friendship then formed 
was of great service to English literatnre, by enlisting, as 
we shall see, in a common cause two able AVriters who sup- 
plemented each other admirably. Since then, however, 
their friendship has been a subject of dissension. This has 
happened because praise of one is supposed to imply blame 
of the other, and one who speaks approvingly of Steele's 
enthusiasm is imagined to be secretly condemning Addi- 
son's coolness.* Yet, since not all writers are admirable, 

* Those who wish to settle the matter more fully will find a full dis- 
cussion in Maeaulay's essay on Addison, and John Forster's on Steele, in 
vol. ii. of his " Historical and Biographical Essays." Mr. Forster thought 
that Macaulay had set up Addison unduly, at Steele's expense, and he 
makes a warm defence of his favorite. With these two sources of in- 
formation before him, the reader has a good chance of making up his 
mind fairly. Still, we should remember how hard it is fully to understand 
people as remote from us as, say, our next-door neighbors, and not be 
over-quick in deciding about people who lived nearly two hundred years 
ago. AVe always like to paint them in strong colors, to describe them 
with a single word. If, for instance, we read that so-and-so was avari- 
cious, we picture him to ourselves sitting in a dark room, behind a barred 
door, counting his money-bags; whereas his avarice may have been a 
trait that showed itself only indirectly, by a certain hardness towards his 
friends. The surest way of ascertaining at a later day what a man was, 
is to find out the impression he made upon his friends, and double weight 



Enijlish Literativre. 131 

let us be grateful for both. I do not know whether it was 
ever the fashion to make invidious comparisons between 
Beaumont and Fletcher, but if they escaped that fate they 
were rare exceptions. Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, whose names are commonly coupled, were 
not so fortunate. 

In due time Addison became a student at Oxford, where 
Steele again met him. His first poetical essay was a short 
address to Dry den, for whom he composed the arguments 
prefixed to the several books of his translation of the 
"aEneid," and translated the greater part of the fourth 
" Georgic," which was published in the same volume with 
" An Account of the Greatest English Poets," and a transla- 
tion from Ovid. The account of the poets, or, as he called 

it, 

" A short account of all the Musc-posscsst, 

That down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times, 
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes," 

is a valueless production, from which I make a few ex- 
tracts to show once more the manner of thought current 
at the time : 

" Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose, 
And many a story told in rhyme and prose ; 
But age has rusted what the poet Avrit, 
Worn out his langunge and obscured his wit ; 
In vain he jests in his unpolished strain, 
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. 

" Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage, 
In ancient tales amus'd a barbarous age ; 



must be given to praise from his enemies. Applying this test, we find 
Addison a most lovable man. He was shy, and would never talk to 
more than one person at a time, but his conversation must have been de- 
lightful. For this we have the testimony of Pope and Swift, and many 
others. Steele said it was Terence and Catullus rolled into one, with 
something else that was neither of them, but Addison alone. 



132 English Literature. 

An age that, yet uneultivate and rude, 
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued 
Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods 
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. 
But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore 
Can charm an understanding age no more." 

Shakspere is omitted ; ttie next poet is 

*' Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote, 

He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less. 
***** 

Thy only fault is wit in its excess. 

* * * * * 

Bless'd man ! who now shall be for ever known 
In Sprat's successful labours and thy own." 

Sprat, if we may interrupt Addison for a moment, not 
only edited Cowley and wrote his life ; he also imitated 
him. How he did this may be gathered from the follow- 
ing poem, which is avowedly in Cowley's manner, "On 
his Mistress Drown'd :" 

" Sweet stream, that dost with equal pace 
Both thyself fly, and thyself chase. 
Forbear awhile to flow, 
And hsten to my woe. 

" Then go, and tell the sea that all its brine 

Is fresh, compared to mine : 
Inform it that the gentler dame. 
Who was the life of all my flame, 

I' th' glory of her bud. 

Has passed the fatal flood. 
Death by this stroke triumphs above 

The greatest power of love : 

Alas, alas, I must give o'er. 
My sighs will let me say no more. 
Go on, sweet stream, and henceforth rest 
No more than does my troubled breast ; 



English Literature. 133 

And if my sad complaints have made thee stay, 
These tears, these tears, shall mend thy way." * 

From Sprat, Addison turned to Milton : 

" Whate'er his pen describes, I more than see 
Whilst every verse, arrayed in majesty, 
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws, 
And seems above the critic's nicer laws." 

Towards the end, he relapses into the customary civility 
of the day, and praises " the courtly Waller," " harmoni- 
ous bard," Roscommon, Denham, " artful Dryden," " har- 
monious Congreve," and " noble Montague." It would be 
the height of unfairness to estimate Addison's critical 
ability by this little poem ; it was but an exercise in ex- 
pression wherein he echoed the language of the time. He 
had not yet formed his own opinions, f While he was in 

* Lee, in his " Sophonisba," has these lines : 

" Near to some murmuring brook I'll lay me down, 
Whose waters if they should too shallow flow 
My tears shall swell them up till I will drown," 

An early instance of these floods of tears is to be found in Montemayor's 
" Diana Enamorada," 1542 ; Venice, 1568, p. 71 ; Engl, trans., by Bartholo- 
mew Yong, London, 1598, p. 78 : " What is it (thinke you) that makes the 
greene grasse of this iland growe, and the waters (that encompasse it 
roundabout) to encrease, but my ceaseless teares ?" The question is asked 
by the deserted Behsa, who bemoans her faithless lover. 

f It would be a great mistake to confound these verses, which are 
scarcely more than an exercise in penmanship, with Addison's real work. 
Yet it is a mistake that is constantly made with regard to writers, each 
one of whom is apparently considered a complete unit from the time he 
began to write until his death. In fact, however, the first compositions of 
an author are generally valuable for showing what were the strongest 
tastes of his parents and teachers. Thus, Dryden, who was one of the 
clearest of writers, began with a copious accumulation of conceits ; Pope, 
whose strength lay in wit and social satire, began with languid and arti- 
ficial pastorals; Wordsworth, with an echo of Goldsmith, conventional 



1,34 English Literature. 

process of forming tliem he was exposed to other influ- 
ences ; and what some of these were we may gather from 
this title of a book published in 1687 : " Spenser Redivivus; 
containing the first book of the Faery Queen, His Essential 
Design preserv'd, but his Obsolete Language and Manner 
of Verse totally laid aside. Deliver'd in Heroick Numbers, 
by a Person of Quality." * At the same time flourished 
Thomas Rymer, whom Pope, according to Spence, called 
about the best critic we have ever had, and whom Ma- 
caulay calls the worst that ever lived. He wrote on 
Shakspere first, in " The Tragedies of the Last Age ; Con- 
sidered and Examined by the Practice of the Ancients 
and the Common Sense of all Ages, 1678-92 ;" and sec- 
ondly, in "A Short View of the Tragedy of the Last 
Age ; its Original Excellency and Corruption ; with some 
Reflections on Shakspear, and other Practitioners for the 
Stage, 1693." Judging things by the practice of the 
Ancients was, as we have seen, the fashion of that day. 
Addison, in his poem, says that henceforth the Simois and 

" rapid Xanthus' celebrated flood " 
shall no 

" longer be the poet's highest themes, 
Though gods and heroes fought promiscuous in their streams ;" 

but that, instead, they will sing of the battle of the Boyne. 
And the common-sense of all ages means generally the 

heroics, and personification ; Victor Hugo, with praise of church and state. 
Every young man is brought up on the conservative teachings of his elders, 
and it is some time before he can overtake the best thought of his day, 
which is just in advance not only of beginners but of most teachers. The 
youth hears vaguely, if at all, of those who are introducing the novelties 
which are to be the commonplaces of the next generation ; he may sigh for 
them, but he hears them spoken of with dislike. Every father tries to turn 
the taste of his children to what he liked when young, and generally the 
revolt begips only when the young man has stepped out into the world. 
* Vide Morley's " First Sketch of English Literature," p. 756. 



English Liter aim^e. 135 

prejudices of him who appeals to it. It certainly meant 
so in this case, for Rymer was most severe in what he 
said about Shakspere. It was " Othello " that he picked 
to pieces. " Why was not this called the tragedy of the 
handkerchief ? We have heard of Fortunatus, his purse, 
and of the invisible cloak long ago worn threadbare, and 
stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete romances ; one 
might think that were a fitter place for this handkerchief 
than that it, at this time of day, be worn on the stage, to 
raise everywhere this clutter and turmoil." And, also, 
"the handkerchief is so remote a trifle, no booby on this 
side Mauritania could make any consequence from it." 
" There is nothing," he says, " in the noble Desdemona, 
that is not below any country kitchen-maid with us." . . . 
"No woman bred out of a pig-sty could talk so meanly." 
Her death, nevertheless, distresses him. "A noble 
Venetian lady is to be murdered by our poet, in sober 
sadness, purely for being a fool. No pagan poet but would 
have found some machine for her deliverance. Pegasus 
would have strained hard to have brought old Perseus on 
his back ; time enough to rescue this Andromeda from so 
foul a monster. Has our Christian poetry no generosity, 
no bowels ? Ha, ha. Sir Launcelot ! Ha, Sir George ! Will 
no ghost leave the shades for us in extremity to save a 
distressed damsel ?" And, finally, he says: " In the neigh- 
ing of a horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a 
meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more 
humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shake- 
speare."* With criticism of this sort for light reading, 

* Some bold statements of Kymer's illustrative of the views then held 
concerning the province of tragedy are worth quoting : " We are to pre- 
sume the greatest virtues where we find the highest rewards, and though 
it is not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet, undoubtedly, all 
crowned heads, by poetical right, are heroes. This character is a flower 



136 English Literature. 

there was evidently room for a man who should introduce 
some of the charm of civilization. Addison was busily 
fitting himself for the task. His acquaintance with Dry- 
den brought him into contact with Congreve, who in his 
turn introduced him to Montague, then chancellor of the 
exchequer, and to Lord Somers, solicitor - general, who 
induced Addison to give up his plan of entering the 
church, and instead to prepare himself for political life. 
There is to be noticed a great change from the time when 
Dryden and his contemporaries were struggling for a liv- 
ing. Then writers could barely live by flattering the great; 
now the times had changed, and writers were sought by 
all of those in authority. The reason of this change is 
simple. Before the revolution of 1688, the king held his 
place by right of birth ; his authority was not to be dis- 
puted. But with 1688, and the accession of William and 
Mary, the royal power depended oA the will of the nation; 
parliamentary government established itself. The king 
selected for ministers men with influence ; the ministers 
had to secure influence as best they might. Dryden's 
satirical poems had shown how great power a writer pos- 
sessed, and with the development of the newspaper he 

a prerogative, so certain, so indispensably annexed to tlie crown, as by no 
poet, or parliament of poets, ever to be invaded." 

" If I mistake not, in poetr}^, no woman is to kill a man, except his 
quality gives her the advantage above him ; nor is a servant to kill the 
master, nor a private man, much less a subject to kill a king, nor on the 
contrary. Poetical decency will not permit death to be dealt to each 
other, by persons whom the laws of duell allow not to enter the lists to- 
gether." He made an exception, however, in favor of kihing a pagan or 
a foreign prince. 

Lord Shaftesbury, in his "Advice to an Author," lYlO, speaks of the 
"Gothic Muse of Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Milton as lisping with, stam- 
mering tongues, that nothing but the youth and rawness of the age could 
excuse." 



English Literature. 137 

became a more important person. Then, too, Montague, 
Earl of Halifax, who, with Prior, had written " The Coun- 
try and the City Mouse," was a patron of letters. Somers 
had been prominent in encouraging the new edition of 
Milton ; Dorset, too, the lord-chamberlain, had tried his 
hand at writing. Still, mere interest in literature would 
have done but little had not Dryden's "Absalom and 
Achitophel," and the controversies it aroused, shown how 
much power wit exercised. While Dorset and Mon- 
tague were Whig patrons of letters, on the other side 
Harley and Bolingbroke encouraged writers to draw their 
morals in favor of Toryism. Thus, after the battle of 
Blenheim, 1704, Addison wrote his panegyric. You will 
remember that, in his lectures on the English Humorists, 
Thackeray mentions the angel's visit when Addison was 
asked to write about the victory: "Your wings seldom 
quiver at second -floor windows now." Marlborough, 
Addison said, 

" In peaceful thought the field of death survej'ed, 
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 
And taught the doubtful battle when to rage. 
So when an angel by divine command. 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land 
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

For this Addison was made commissioner of appeals, vice 
Mr. Locke ; the next year Addison went to Hanover with 
Lord Halifax, and the year after was made under-secre- 
tary of state. 

All these things came at a good time for Addison. No 
one ever grumbles at such luck, to be sure, but Addison, 



138 English Literature. 

who in 1699 had been granted a pension of £300 in order 
that he might travel in preparation for diplomatic life, had 
lost it in 1702, when his friends went out of office. The 
battle of Blenheim, as we say, brought him into fame^ 
however. It was John Philips who sounded the praises 
of Blenheim from the Tory side, or, as Dr. Johnson puts 
it, "with occult oj^position to Addison."* Here is an ex- 
ample of his manner : 

*' Now from each van 
The brazen Instruments of death discharge 
Horrible flames, aud turbid streaming clouds 
Of smoke sulphureous ; intermix'd with these 
Large globous irons fly, of dreadful hiss. 
Singeing the air, and from long distance bring 
Surprising slaughter ... by sudden burst 
Disploding murderous bowels, fragments of steel. 
And stones and glass, and nitrous grain adust : 
A thousand ways at once the shiver'd orbs 
Fly diverse, working torment and foul rout." 

As a not unnatural consequence, 

" Unmanly dread invades 
The French astonied ; straight their useless arms 
They quit, and in ignoble flight confide, 
Unseemly yelling ; distant hills return 
The hideous noise." 

It is not necessary to read more. You mil notice that 
the lines are written in blank verse of the Miltonic pattern. 
And Philips, I may say by the way, was one of the first 
of the English poets to abandon the couplet and to take 
to the rival measure. In it he wrote the " Splendid Shil- 
ling," a burlesque, and a fifth Georgic, on " Cider," which 



* Addison had tried his hand at the imitation of Milton, but without 
much success. Vide a piece out of ^En. iii. (Bohn's edition of Addison's 
Works, i. 38). 



English Literature. 139 

has been said to be a sound manual of instruction for the 
farmer. It may be doubted, however, whether the farmer 
would gather from these few lines that he was told to 
pick off superfluous fruit : 

" The wise 
Spare not the little offsprings if they grow 
Redundant, but the thronging clusters thin 
By kind avulsion, else the starveling brood, 
Void of sufficient sustenance, will yield 
A slender autumn, which the niggard soul 
Too late shall weep, and curse his thrifty hand. 
That would not timely ease the ponderous boughs." 

The general reader will find his profit, too, in studying 
the poem : 

"Nor from the sable ground expect success, 
Nor from cretaceous, stubborn, and jejune ; 
The must of pallid hue declares the soil 
Devoid of spirit : wretched he that quaffs 
Such wheyish liquors ! oft with colic pangs, 
With pungent colic pangs, distrest he'll roar, 
And toss, and turn, and curse th' unwholesome draught." * 

We shall see plenty of examples of this so-called Miltonic 
way of writing, as in Thomson's "Seasons," Cowper, Words- 
worth, to name a few of the most prominent. Dr. John- 
son bitterly opposed blank verse, and in his life of John 
Philips he said "he imitated Milton's numbers indeed, 
but imitates them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily 
copied ; and whatever there is in Milton which the reader 
wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licentious is 
accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse 
was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our 
metre in Milton's age ; and if he had written after the ' 
improvements made by Dryden, it is reasonable to believe 

* The poem was translated into Italian. This kind of writing was ad- 
mired then, and previously, in Italy. 



140 Miglish Literature. 

he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation of 
numbers into his work." This was the statement of a 
prejudiced man, but it is interesting to see what may be 
thought and stated with approbation in another time than 
our own. 

At any rate, it will be clear that Addison did not have 
a serious rival in this miniature Milton. Philips, we are 
told, had admired Milton from his tender youth, but those 
who followed him doubtless belonged to the romantic half 
of mankind, who revolted from the reasonableness of those 
who clung to the heroic measure. Reasonableness had 
charms for Addison. In his preparations for diplomacy 
he made the usual tour of Europe, and, like many since 
his time, and a few before, he wrote a book about his 
travels. This volume has no great merit, although the de- 
scriptions are even now precise. As Doudan said, although 
Italy had not then been wholly cut up by the railroad, it 
seems as if not a nail had been driven in all Italy since 
Addison visited it. But a good many things have been 
driven into the heads of travellers since Addison went to 
Italy and compared the country, as he found it, with the 
descriptions he recalled from the Latin poets. 

II. Nowadays the traveller who finds himself before 
St. Mark's in Venice dilates with various emotions. He 
has Ruskin's " Seven Lamps " and the " Stones of Venice " 
in his hand-bag, and the fact that he has learned to admire 
other things in architecture than the works of the ancients 
and the classical imitations of the Renaissance is another 
instance of the vicissitudes of taste. What was the 
rigorously enforced view of the times we are discuss- 
ing, we may see, for instance, in Bishop Burnet's " Let- 
ters from Switzerland, Italy, and Some Parts of Germany, 
in the Years 1685 and 1686 " (Rotterdam, 1687), p. 128. 
The worthy bishop says : '' St. Mark's Church hath noth- 



English Literature. 141 

ing to recommend it, but its great Antiquity, and the 
vast Riches of the Building, it is dark and low ; but the 
pavement is so rich a Mosaick, and the whole roof is also 
Mosaick, the outside and inside are of such excellent Mar- 
ble, the Frontispiece is adorned with so many Pillars of 
Porphyry and Jasper, and above all with the four Horses 
of Corinthian Brass," etc.," that when all this is considered, 
one doth no where see so much cost brought together." 
"The Dome of Milan," he says, "hath nothing to com- 
mend it of Architecture, it being built in the rude Gothic 
manner" (p. 103). 

Addison says of the beautiful cathedral at Sienna : 
"There is nothing in this City so extraordinary as the 
Cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he 
has seen St. Peter's, tho' 'tis quite of another make, and 
can only be looked upon as one of the Masterpieces of 
Gothic architecture. When a man sees the prodigious 
pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in 
these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to him- 
self what miracles of architecture they would have left 
us, had they only been instructed in the right way ; for 
when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than 
it is at present, and the riches of the people much more at 
the disposal of the priests, there was so much money con- 
sumed on these Gothic cathedrals, as would have finished 
a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised 
either before or since that time." He then goes on to 
describe the very spouts, " loaden with ornaments ;" the 
windows, "formed like so many scenes of perspective, 
with a multitude of little pillars retiring one behind an- 
other ;" the great " columns " finely engraven with fruits 
and foliage " that run twisting about them from the 
very top to the bottom ;" the whole body of the church 
" chequered with different lays of white and black marble ;" 



142 English Literature. 

the pavement " curiously cut out in designs and Scripture- 
stories and the Fruit cut with such a variety of figures 
and over-run with so many little mazes and labyrinths of 
Sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier 
show to those who prefer false beauties and affected orna- 
ments to a noble and majestic simplicity." 

Addison and Burnet did but express the average opinion 
of their time* just as we all do when we praise what 

* A century earlier these prejudices had not come into existence. Mon- 
taigne, in 1580, culls the cathedral at Florence "a magnificent structure, 
one of the finest and most sumptuous churches in the world," See his 
account in his " Journey into Italy," iv. 284 and 290. Of Sienna, he says, 
" The cathedral church is very little inferior to that of Florence." 

Lyly's "Euphues and his England," 1580, Arber's Reprint, p. 251: 
"But first they came to Canterbury, an olde Citie— somewhat decayed, yet 
beautiful to behold, most famous for a CathoHc Church, the very Majestie 
whereoff stroke them into a maze." 

Coryat in his " Crudities " (edition 1611, p. 98) calls Milan cathedral an 
"exceedingly glorious and beautiful church," and that at Amiens, "the 
queene of al the churches in France and the fairest that ever I saw till 
then" (Id. p. 12). Notice, too, his wild enthusiasm over the piazza and 
church of St. Mark's (Id. pp. 1*71-216). 

Evelyn, even as late as Oct. 25, 1644, says : " The Domo or Cathedral, both 
without and within, is of large square stones of black and white marble 
polished, of inexpi-essible beauty, as is the front adorned with sculptures 
and rare statues. . . . The pulpit is beautified with marble figures, a piece 
of exquisite work ;" and the next May, " dined at Sienna where we could 
not pass admiring the great church." 

Of St. Mark's he said : " The Cathedral is also Gothic, yet for the pre- 
ciousness of the materials," etc., " far exceeding any in Rome, St. Peter's 
hardly excepted." "I much admired the splendid history of our Blessed 
Saviour, composed all of mosaic. . . . The roof is of most excellent mo- 
saic." " After all that is said, this church is in my opinion much too 
dark and dismal and of heavy work." The prejudice against Gothic work 
was not so bitter then as it became after the Restoration. Evelyn also 
visited the cathedrals of Rouen and of Pisa. The latter, he says, is superb. 
All the English cathedrals he admired warmly, Canterbury, Gloucester, 



English Literature. 143 

they condemned or overlooked. Every one held their 
view.* President de Brosses, in one of his letters from 
Venice, Aug. 26, 1739, says : "You know by reputation 
the palace of St. Mark's ; it is an ugly old fellow, if there 
ever was one, massive, sombre, and Gothic, in the most ex- 
ecrable taste. To be sure, the great inner courtyard has 
something magnificent in its construction. The doge lives 
in the palace, but he has the worst lodging of all the pris- 
oners of state, for the ordinary prison, close by, is a thor- 
oughly elegant and agreeable building. I do not care to 
linger there too long, however, and I make my way to the 
church of St. Mark's. You have imagined that this was 
an admirable place, but you are very much mistaken ; it 
is a sort of Greek church, low, impervious to light, in 
wretched taste both inside and out. It is surmounted by 
seven domes lined on the inside with mosaics on a gold 
ground, which make them look more like copper boilers 
than domes. . . . With the immense wealth spent there, 
it could not help being curious in spite of the diabolical 
workmen who have lent a hand to the work. From top 
to bottom, inside and out, the church is covered with pict- 
ures in mosaic on a gold ground. . . . With the exception 
of the colouring, which is tolerably well preserved by the 
nature of the material, there is nothing more pitiable than 
these mosaics ; fortunately the artisans took the wise pre- 
caution of writing above each piece what it was intended 

etc. York cathedral he calls "a most enth^e and magnificent piece of 
Gothic architecture." 

* Thus, in the Spectator, No. 415, Addison says: "Let any one reflect 
on the disposition of mind he finds in himself at his first entrance into 
the Pantheon at Rome, and how his imagination is filled with something 
great and amazing ; and at the same time consider how little, in propor- 
tion, he is affected with the inside of a Gothic cathedral, though it be five 
times lai-ger than the other ; which can arise from nothing else but great- 
ness of the manner in the one, and the meanness in the other." 



144 English Literature. 

to represent." The four horses above the entrance he 
calls the only thing about the building which is really 
worthy of admiration. 

The baptistery at Florence is, he says, "a little less 
abominable than the cathedral of St. Mark's." * In 1753, 
Rousseau, in his letter on French Music, said that counter- 
fugues, double fugues, and other difficult fooleries that the 
ear cannot endure nor the reason justify, are evidently 
relics of barbarism and bad taste which survive, like the 
porticos of Gothic churches, to the disgrace of those who 
had the patience to construct them. Voltaire, too, " used 
Gothic architecture as the symbol for the supreme height 
of rudeness and barbarism." f 

In another respect, Addison was a man of his time ; that 
is, in the way he regarded natural scenery. In one of his 

* Smollett, ill "Humphrey Clinker," p. 219: "As for the minster 
[of York], I know not how to distinguish it, except by its great size and 
the height of its spire, from those other ancient churches in different 
parts of the kingdom, which used to be called monuments of Gothic 
architecture ; but it is now agreed that this style is Saracen rather than 
Gothic ; and I suppose it was first imported into England from Spain, 
great part of which was under the dominion of the Moors. Those Brit- 
ish architects who adopted this style don't seem to have considered the 
propriety of their adoption." These buildings are suitable in hot coun- 
tries on account of their coolness, but " nothing could be more preposter- 
ous than to imitate such a mode of architecture in a country like England. 
. . . The external appearance of an old cathedral cannot be but displeas- 
ing to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety or proportion, 
even though he may be ignorant of architecture as a science : and the 
long slender spire puts one in mind of a crituinal impaled, with a sharp 
stake running up through his shoulder. These towers, or steeples, were 
likewise borrowed from the Mahometans, who, having no bells, used such 
minarets for the purpose of calling the people to prayers. . . . There is 
nothing of this Arabic architecture in the assembly-room, which seems 
to me to have been built on a design of Palladio, and might be converted 
into an elegant place of worship." 
f J. Morley's " Rousseau," i. 301. 



English Literature. 145 

letters, dated December, 1701, he wrote that he had reached 
Geneva after " a very troublesome journey over the Alps. 
My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices ; 
and you can't imagine how much I am pleased with the 
sight of a plain." This little phrase is a good illustration 
of the contempt for mountains, of the way they were re- 
garded as wild, barbaric, forgotten, useless excrescences.* 
This was not a temporary perversion of taste, however, 
like the detestation of Gothic architecture. The love of 
mountains is something really of modern, very modern, 
growth, the first traces of which we shall come across towards 
the middle of the last century. Before that time we find 
mountains spoken of in terms of the severest reprobation. 
Addison in his Italian travels writes fromThonon : " There 
are vistas in front of it [the town] of great length, that 
terminate upon the Lake. At one side of the walks you 
have a near prospect of the Alps, which are broken into 
so many steeps and precipices that they fill the mind with 
an agreeable kind of horror, and form one of the most ir- 
regular misshapen scenes in the world." As if, in a hap- 
pier world, the tops of mountains should be shaped like 
Corinthian columns ! Of Berne he says : '' There is the 
noblest summer-prospect in the world from this walk ; for 
you have a full view of a huge range of mountains that 
lie in the country of the Grisons, and are covered with 
snow." This was about as warm an expression of admi- 
ration for mountain scenery as had been written up to 
that time. In the mediaeval books of travel, in the ac- 
counts of the Crusades, we find nothing but horror ex- 
pressed of the Alps ; one German (1544) tells us at some 
length how his bones and his heart quivered as he stood 

at the top of the Gemmi. 

* Howell, in a passage quoted below, calls mountains " excrescences of 
nature." 



146 English Literature. 

Evelyn is, perhaps, the single exception, and even he is 
not too remote from his times. He always mentions, 
though generally without adjectives, the different views 
of the Alps from various places ; but he found the jour- 
ney over them very trying. After going over -night 
"through very steep, craggy, and dangerous passages to 
Yedra," . . . where "we had a very infamous, wretched 
lodging. The next morning we mounted again through 
strange, horrid, and fearfull craggs and tracts, abounding 
in pine-trees, and only inhabited by beares, wolves, and 
wild goates ; nor could we anywhere see above a pistol- 
shoote before us, the horizon being terminated with rocks 
and mountains, whose tops covered with snow seemed to 
touch the skies, and in many places pierced the clouds. 
. . . The narrow bridges in some places, made only by 
felling huge fir-trees and laying them athwarte from 
mountain to mountain over cataracts of stupendious depth, 
are very dangerous, . . . and in some places we passe 
between mountains that have been broken and fallen on 
one another, which is very terrible, and one had neede of a 
sure foote and steady head to climb some of these preci- 
pices, besides that they are harbours for beares and wolves, 
who have sometimes assaulted travellers. In these straights 
we frequently alighted, now freezing in the snow, and anon 
frying by the reverberation of the sun against the cliffs. 
. . . The next morning we returned our guide, and tooke 
fresh mules and another to conduct us to the Lake of 
Geneva, passing through as pleasant a country as that we 
had just travel'd was melancholy and troublesome." On 
the way to Martigny, they passed "between the horrid 
mountains on either hand." But later he says, "we sailed 
the whole length of the lake, about thirty miles, the coun- 
tries bordering on it (Savoy and Berne) affording one of 
the most delightful prospects in the world — the Alps, cov- 



English Literature. 147 

ered with snow, though at a great distance yet showing 
their aspiring tops." And we find Evelyn continually 
speaking of beautiful views in England * — as, for one ex- 

* But of the Riviera he said (p. 'ZS) : " All this coast (except a little at 
San Remo) is a high and steepe naountainous ground, consisting all of rock 
marble, without any grass, tree, or rivage, formidable to look on." Moun- 
tains, that is, he found intolerable. 

Montaigne (iv. 263) had remarked of the country near Yerona: "The 
road here [was] the roughest they had as yet traversed, and the scenery 
was wild and forbidding in the highest degree, both of which circum- 
stances were owing to these same mountains." 

So President de Brosses says of the Riviera (i. 4Y) that " there is al- 
ways a precipice on one side, which seemed to my companions a very poor 
invention. There could be nothing more beautiful," he says, " than the ap- 
pearance of all this shore. . . . There are nothing but well-built and popu- 
lous towns and villages." 

In one of Howell's letters (Nov. 6, 1G21) to Sir J. H.,from Lyons, he 
writes: "I am now got over the Alps and returned to France. I had 
crossed and clambered up the Pyraneans to Spain before ; they are not so 
high and hideous as the Alps, but for our mountains in Wales, as Eppint 
and Penwinmaur, which are so much cried up among us, they are mole- 
hills in comparison of these : they are but pigmies compared to giants, 
but blisters compared to imposthumes, or pimples to warts. Besides, our 
mountains in Wales bear always something useful to man or beast — some 
grass, at least ; but these huge, monstrous excrescences of nature bear 
nothing (most of them) but craggy stones : the tops of some of them are 
blanched over all the year long with snow, and those who drink the water 
have goitreP 

Compare letter cliv., in " Sir Chai^les Grandison," describing the pas- 
sage of the Alps : At Pont Beauvoisin " we bid adieu to France, and found 
ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains. 
Indeed, it was a total change of the scene. We had left behind us a 
blooming spring, which enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges 
on the road we passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers. . . . 
But when we entered Savoy, nature wore a very different face ; and I must 
own that my spirits were great sufferers by the change. . . . The unseason- 
able coldness of the weather, and the sight of one of the worst countries 
under heaven. ... At Lanebourg . . . CA'cry object which presents itself 
to view is excessively miserable." 



148 English Literature. 

ample, " what was most stupendious to me was the rock of 
St. Vincent, a little distance from the town, the precipice 
whereof is equal to anything of that nature I have seen 
in the most confragose cataracts of the Alps, the river 
gliding between them at an extraordinary depth. . . . 
There is also on the side of this horrid Alp a very ro- 
mantic * seat " {horrid = awful) . I might quote many pas- 
sages in which he speaks of beautiful views, but all that I 
wish to point out here is the non-existence of the feeling 
of admiration for mountain scenery. Nowadays, the fiercer 
the mountains the warmer our raj^tures. As we go on, I 
shall try to make clear the gradual change in men's feel- 
ings concerning this sort of natural beauty. We hav-e 
now ascertained what were the views that were current in 
Addison's time and consequently authoritative over him. 

III. Let us remember that what we understand as mod- 
ern civilization was new then ; that all the thousand-and- 
one particulars which make life comfortable were either 
not known then, or were as new as the telephone is to us — 
although we have this advantage, that we are accustomed 
to inventions and that new wonders soon become com- 
monplaces to us. Evelyn speaks of a nobleman's house 
into which water was carried, as a princely mansion. The 
streets were as dangerous as a drinking-saloon in a mining 

Berkeley (Clarendon Press ed., iv. 68), speaking of crossing Mont Ceuia 
on New Year's Day, 1*714, says that the rocks and crags, which were ter- 
rible then, " at the best are high, craggy, and steep enough to cause the 
heart of the most valiant man to melt within him." 

Winckelraann, however, admii'ed them in 1755. See his " Life," by Carl 
Justi, IT. i. 1. 

Compare with these Mr. Bryce's expressions about Ararat, with his quo- 
tation from Tournefort (a French botanist at the beginning of the eigh- 
teenth century) in his "Transcaucasia and Ararat" (pp. 231-233). 

* This must be one of the first instances of the use of the word I'oman- 
tic{lijU). 



English LiteratnTe. 149 

town on Saturday niglit. In 1679, Dry den was set upon 
and cudgelled by ruffians hired by Lord Rochester, be- 
cause that nobleman quarrelled with the poet and his 
patron. Lord Mulgrave. In 1712, a band of young men 
calling themselves Mohocks committed various brutal as- 
saults on unoffending people whom they met in the street, 
flattening their noses, gouging out their eyes, compelling 
them to dance until they dropped exhausted, rolling wom- 
en in barrels, etc., beating the watch, etc. Horace Wal- 
pole, in 1752, wrote: "One is forced to travel even at 
noon as if one were going to battle." It was not till 1736 
that London was lit ; before that time a lamp was put be- 
fore every tenth house, from Michaelmas, Sept. 29, to Lady 
Day, March 25, and that only till midnight and on what 
were called dark nights, twenty days of every month, the 
rest being supposed to be lit by the moon. While crime 
was rampant, prisoners were put to death for trivial rea- 
sons, and those who were imprisoned were thereby sen- 
tenced to death by jail-fever. Women were publicly 
burned. Evelyn mentions somewhere in his Diary seeing 
a woman at the stake while he was on his way to look at 
some medals. Yet it would be impossible to draw a full 
picture of the social life of the time, although there is 
an abundance of material from which facts may be col- 
lected. When we come to the Spectator we shall see a 
number of social incidents mentioned and commented on. 
What we notice is the newness at Addison's time of 
what we understand by modern life, and the enormous at- 
traction of everything that stood for civilization and re- 
finement. The age was in many ways gross, but it was 
working with all possible zeal for better things, and it 
sought aid from every direction. The people of that day 
had had enough of natural forces ; what they wanted was 
these natural forces tamed and softened, and they saw 



150 English Literature. 

their ideal in the couplet, in Roman architecture, and in 
smooth landscapes. Hence we comprehend their abhor- 
rence of the old dramatists of Gothic cathedrals, and it 
becomes clear to us how Addison could say that in view- 
ing " huge heaps of mountains, high rocks and precipices, 
or a wide expanse of waters, we are not struck with the 
novelty or beauty of the sight, but with that rude kind 
of magnificence which appears in many of these stupen- 
dous works of nature " {Spectator, No. 412) ; and " we find 
the works of nature still more pleasing the more they 
resemble those of art. . . . Hence it is that we take de- 
light in a prospect which is well laid out, and diversified 
with fields and meadows, woods and rivers ; in those ac- 
cidental Landscapes of trees, clouds, and cities that are 
sometimes found in the veins of marble ; in the curious 
fretwork of rocks and grottos ; and, in a word, in anything 
that hath such a variety or regularity as may seem the 
effect of design, in what we call the works of chance" 
(No. 414). 

Just as now we look to science as the future corrector 
of all evils, so they looked to literature ; and to expect of 
them that they should have looked with frank enthusiasm 
at lawless natural forces would be like asking men who 
have just been saved from shipwreck to sit on the rocks 
and admire the heavy surf. 

IV. We have all this time been leaving Addison shiver- 
ing at the foot of the Alps, which he detested ; yet these 
digressions may show that he was fitting himself to speak 
to the men of his time in an authoritative manner — not 
from so high a position that his words would be looked on 
as those of a man raised above all ordinary interests, but 
as those of one who had received the best training the 
time afforded. While Addison was getting his bookish 
training, Steele, his future coadjutor in the Spectator, was 



English Literature. 151 

acquiring a practical knowledge of the world. He eii- 
listed as a private in tlie Coldstream Guards, although, as 
he afterwards said, " when he mounted a war-horse, with 
a great sword in his hand, and planted himself behind 
King William III. against Louis XIY., he lost the succes- 
sion to a very good estate in the county of Wexford, in 
Ireland, from the same humour which he has preserved 
ever since, of preferring the state of his mind to that of 
his fortune." 

Lord Cutts, the colonel of the regiment, made Steele his 
secretary, and got him an appointment as ensign. Then 
Steele wrote his first book, " The Christian Hero ;" as he 
said : *' He first became an author when an ensign of the 
Guards, a way of life exposed to much irregularity ; and 
being thoroughly convinced of many things of which he 
often repented, and which he more often repeated, he 
writ, for his own private use, a little book, called 'The 
Christian Hero,' with a design principally to fix upon his 
own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in 
opposition to a stronger propensity to unwarrantable 
pleasures ;" and, in short, he published it to have a stronger 
reason for conforming to his own best intentions. In this 
book he spoke of the heroism of the ancient world — 
for, as we saw in Collier's book, the ancients had to be ap- 
pealed to in proof of everything — but the greatest praise 
he gave to the true Christian, whom he defined as " one 
who is always a benefactor with the mien of a receiver." 
The didactic flavor of the book he sought to relieve by a 
comedy, " The Funeral ; or, Grief a la Mode," in which 
he cleverly denounced affected mummeries of grief. He 
wrote other comedies, with a moral tone, in the new en- 
deavor to let the theatre teach moral lessons ; in fact, Par- 
son Adams said of Addison's "Cato" and Steele's "Con- 
scious Lovers," that they were the only plays he ever 



152 English Literature. 

heard of ; '' and I must own," lie says, " in the latter there 
are some things almost solemn enough for a sermon." 

The great work of these two men, as well as the most 
lasting monument of their friendship, is the Spectator. 
The credit for the first thought of this belongs to Steele ; 
Addison had equipped himself for writing, but he needed 
some outside spur before revealing the stores of his intelli- 
gence and learning ; Steele had already written with this 
object in view, and he quickly seized the plan of publish- 
ing a brief daily paper. 

The freedom of the press had been one of the most for- 
tunate results of the revolution of 168.8 ; at the end of the 
session of 1693, the Licensing Act expired, and was not re- 
newed. Even before these formal measures had secured 
liberty, many new papers had been established, but these 
had led a precarious existence ; it was only when the cen- 
sorship really disappeared that journalism fairly began ; 
the first fortnight after the final abolition of the censor- 
ship, May 3, 1695, saw the beginning, and a number quick- 
ly followed. These were wretched, meagre little things, 
appearing three times a week, printed sometimes on but 
one side of the leaf, and announcing the merest scraps of 
news. Soon came the Flying Post, with the news printed, 
and a blank space left for those who sent the paper to 
their friends in the country to add on it whatever they 
pleased ; and in 1702 the first daily paper appeared in 
London. 

What these papers and their successors drove out was 
the pamphlet, written by Grub-street hacks. Politics had 
invaded the stage, where it appeared in the songs and the 
prologues and epilogues, but it was the anonymous and 
scurrilous pamphlets that had more especialty busied them- 
selves with this subject. Now, when discussion was free, 
and needed no longer to be carried on in the dark, journal- 



' * English Literature. 153 

ism gradually attracted the ablest writers, and the days of 
the pamphlets were numbered. Journalism attained its 
power but slowly. The first man who thought of combin- 
ing entertainment with information was one John Dunton,* 
who, March 17, 1690, began the publication of a penny pa- 
per, called first the Atheyiian Gazette and then the Athenian 
Mercury, or "A Scheme to answer a series of Questions 
Monthly, the Querist remaining concealed." The questions 
were such as might well have puzzled the Athenian So- 
ciety : " Where was the soul of Lazarus for the four days 
he lay in the grave ? Suppose Lazarus had an estate and 
bequeathed it to his Friends, whether ought he or his 
Legatees to enjoy it after he was raised from the dead ?" 
*' Where does extinguished fire go ?" *' Whether the tor- 
ments of the damned are visible to the Saints ? and vice 
versa f " What became of the waters after the flood ?" 
" Whether 'tis lawful for a man to beat his wife ?" 
Other questions were like these : 

"Wherefore is it, that a piece of wood thrown from high to low into 
the water, together with a piece of lead, stone, or other hard and solid body 
of the same weight, both descending and falling at the same time on the 
water, and yet the lead, or a stone, will sink and the wood swim ? — Ans. 
The wood will not remain sunk in the water, but swim on the top there- 
of, because it is aerial, and the place of air is above the water; the others 
will sink because they are terrestrial and aquatick; but in the air the 
wood will descend as swift as either, because the air, as all other elements, 
except fire, do weigh in their natural place." 

" Wherefore are we more timorous and fearful in the dark and in the 
night (especially if we are alone) than in the day-time, and in the light ? 
— Am. Some do attribute this to the danger that may be apprehended by 
knocks and blows, when we cannot see from whence they come. [There 



* In his " Life and Errors of John Dunton," i. 188, he tells us that he 
was walking in the street with a friend when the idea of this publication 
struck him. He at once exclaimed, " Well, sir, I have a thought I would 
not exchange for fifty guineas !" 

'7* 



154 English Literature. 

Avould seem to be more danger of these if we were not alone.] The true 
reason of this then is, that the great enemy of human kind, being the 
Prince and Lover of Darkness (as the Psalmist saith) walks in the dark- 
ness. [We have all felt sudden tremors in the dark] and the reason 
hereof may be that there is some evil spirit that we dread, without seeing 
of it." 

" Why are the shadows of the sun more short at mid-day, than in the 
morning or at evening ?" 

" Were all the creatures (as well as the serpent) vocal in Paradise as 
all the trees were in the Dodonian Wood ? Or was it the serpent only ? 
If the last, how came that to deserve the benefit of speech above the rest ? 
— Atis. The serpent only, which, in a few words, has but just outrivalled 
the mischief of such questions." ' 

*' Why should the serpent creep upon his belly, for his penalty ? Or 
did he walk upon his tail before ?" . 

*' Whether is the more noble, man or woman ?" 

Still, questions which we shall see later discussed in the 
Specto.tor are broached here, e. g. : 

" Is it expedient that women should be learned ? — Ans. Knowledge 
puffeth up the mind ; therefore if women were learned, they would be 
prouder and more insupportable than before. Besides, a good opinion of 
themselves is inconsistent with the obedience they are designed for. 
Therefore God gave knowledge to Adam and not to Eve, who by the bare 
desire of knowledge destroyed all." 

" Why are they not learned as men ; are they not capable to become 
such ? Why have they not solidity of judgment ?" 

" Whether it is prudent to lodge in a room haunted by spirits ? — Ans. 
" A good man may, bad men should not tempt the Devil." 

*' Of what form was the serpent in Paradise, and whether such a sort of 
creature were not more likely to frighten than tempt Eve ? — A^is. To 
tempt a woman it is reasonable to conjecture that it had a man's face, for 
there are such snakes in Madagascar." 

Dunton, and a few of his friends, forming the Athenian 
Society, as they called it, answered these and absurder 
questions with, inexhaustible seriousness. It may be worth 
w^hile to notice that one of this society was Samuel Wes- 
ley, Dunton's brother-in-law, and father of the founder of 



English Literature. 155 

Methodism. They were once badly deceived.* Thus, 
they were asked this question : " Since in your Advertise- 
ment you make it known that a Chyrurgeon is taken into 
your Society, I have thought fit to propound the follow- 
ing Question, withal assuring you that the matter of the 
Fact is true. A Sailor on board the Fleet, by an unlucky 
Accident broke his Leg, being in Drink, and refusing the 
assistance of the Surgeon of the Ship, called for a piece 
of new Tarpauling that lay on the Deck, which he rolled 
some turns round his Leg, tying up all close with a few 
Hoop-sticks, and was able immediately after to walk round 
the ship, never keeping his Bed one Day. I would know 
whether the Cure is to be attributed to the Emplastic 
Nature of the tarr'd and pitched Cloth bound on strait 
with the Hoop-sticks, &c., or rather whether it may not 
be solved according to the Cartesian Philosophy ?" 

The concealed querist had the pleasure of receiving a 
serious though vague reply concerning fractures, tarred 
cloth, and Copernicus, from the club, who did not see that 
he spoke of a wooden leg. 

Besides discharging this delicate duty, the paper — at 
first weekly, then twice a week — gave a list of books to be 
studied in such subjects as history, divinity, poetry, etc., 
English and foreign. This may seem to us its most im- 
portant function: but the Marquis of Halifax used to read 
these questions and answers ; Sir William Temple used 
even to send questions ; and Dunton received poems from 
Tate and Defoe, and Swift sent his " Ode to the Athenian 
Society" to the society itself, with a request that they 
print it. His letter, which is published with the ode, will 
show how considerable was the reputation of this club. 



* Vide Beljame, p. 272, who copies it from the original paper. Nat- 
urally, it was not reprinted in bound volumes. 



156 English Liter atwe. 

Defoe was the most eminent of Dunton's* imitators, 
beginning the publication of his WeeMy Meview of the 
Affairs of France : Purged from the Errors and Par- 
tiality of Nev^s-writers and Petty- Statesmen of all Sides. 
This contained much serious political discussion in which 
Defoe did his best to make plain to his English readers 
the true condition of France, and at the end came a part 
of the paper called the Mercure Scandale, or later Scan- 
dalous, and then Scandal, Club, which contained answers 
to questions, the discussion of various social matters, at- 
tacks on drunkenness, swearing, duelling, etc. ; the Review 
lived till May, 1713, but it is now known better as the 
model of the Tatler than for anything else. 

You will notice the steps by which the periodical grew. 
Steele saw Defoe's success, and began the Tatler ; this 
appeared at first three times a week, on post-days, as did 
the PemeiG. But, while both journals supported the same 
side in politics, Steele made the political part subordinate 
to the social essays, while Defoe did the reverse. Steele, 
too, was at the time the director of the London Gazette, 
so that he had the first sight of political news. The politi- 
cal part faded away soon, after Addison had joined him— 
he began with Ko. 18 — and the paper busied itself with 

* Dunton visited this country in 1685-6, and thus described Cambridge 
in one of his letters : " This town is one of the neatest and best-compacted 
towns in the whole couutr3^ It has many stately structures and well- 
contrived streets which for handsomeness and beauty outdoes Boston 
itself." At the college he "found eight or ten young fellows, sitting 
around, smoking tobacco, with the smoke of wdiich the room was so full 
that you could hardly see, and the whole house smelt so strong of it, that 
when I was going upstairs, I said, this is certainly a tavern." The stu- 
dents, he adds, " could hardly speak a word of Latin, so that my comrade 
could not converse with them. They took us to the library, where there 
was nothing particular. We looked over it a little." This was the time 
he spoke of Bunyan. Vide aupra, p. 35, note. 



English Literature. 157 

social matters. Steele saw, however, greater possibili- 
ties before himself and Addison, and so, Jan. 2, 1710-11, 
the Tatler was allowed to expire, and in the following 
March the first number of the Spectator appeared, simply 
as a literary journal, and every week-day, two important 
innovations. 

It would be easy, but it would be unfair, to sneer at the 
Tatler and the Spectator ; it is true that some of the papers 
concern themselves with teaching rudimentary virtues, or 
the rudiments of the virtues, and that they are filled with 
praise of sentiments which we associate with copy-books. 
The essayist of the present time, as I think Mr. Leslie 
Stephen pointed out, has to leave the beaten track and 
show, for instance, how punctuality leads to the waste 
of time, how good-nature exposes a man to imposition, 
and to abuse by mischief-makers, etc., etc. .Then they 
proved platitudes — platitudes meaning trite truths ; now 
we amuse ourselves by picking flaws in the demonstra- 
tion. 

In his " History of English Literature," Taine picks out 
gome light, frivolous matter, and says that it is what Eng- 
lish-speaking people call humor, leaving it to be understood 
that English-speaking people do not know what humor is — 
which is a hasty statement — and then he goes on to prove 
that Addison, beneath all his cultivation, is an Englishman, 
and has many sides which do not please the French. He has 
Protestant prejudices, he preaches, he treats his readers as 
if they were children, he refuses to discuss politics, etc., 
etc. ; but these qualities combine to show how exactly fitted 
Addison was to fill the position he had chosen. Collier's 
remarks on the stage leave upon the reader an impression 
of an earnest but clumsy and angry theologian. It was in 
comparison with such men, and Collier was in many ways 
the best of the class, that Addison is to be judged. His 



158 English Literature. 

French contemporaries addressed a witty, polished public, 
capable of perceiving half-truths, sensitive to implication, 
full of literary tact and knowledge ; Addison wrote for 
women who actually had nothing to read except the trans- 
lation of long-winded romances, and for men who cared 
for nothing but open - air pleasures, or the plays of the 
time. How they were brought by ingenious variety and a 
due mixture of entertainment with instruction to become 
a reading public, we may learn from a few stray notices in 
contemporary publications. One man says that he used 
to collect his neighbors — "taking care not to alarm the 
country gentlemen by any premature mention of antiqui- 
ties, he endeavored at first to allure them into the more 
flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them were 
brought together every post-day in the coffee-house in the 
Abbey Yard ; and after one of the party had read aloud 
the last published number of the Taller , they proceeded to 
talk over the subject among themselves." And elsewhere, 
" the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to read the 
news of the week; the Spectators were read as regularly as 
the JournaV The "general reader" was now born, and 
was at once pampered. After Collier's harshness came 
gentle words like these : " I cannot be of the same opinion 
with my friends and fellow-labourers, the Reformers of 
Manners, in their severity towards plays ; but must allow, 
that a good play, acted before a well-bred audience, must 
raise very proper incitements to good behaviour, and must 
be the most quick and most prevailing method of giving 
young people a turn of sense and good-breeding." Humor 
like this must have come as a revelation: Mr. Bickerstaff 
meets Ned Softly, who insists on reading to him a sonnet 
he had written upon a lady 

" who showed me some verses of her own making, and is, perhaps, the 
best poet of her age : 



English Literature. i59 

"'To MiRA, ON Her Incomparable Poems. 

I. 

" ' When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine, 

And tune your soft melodious notes, 

You seem a sister of the Nine 

Or Phoebus' self in petticoats. 

II. 

" ' I fancy when your song you sing, 

(Your song you sing with so much art), 
Your pen was plucked from Cupid's wing ; 
For, ah ! it wounds me hke his dart.' 

" ' Why,' says I, ' this is a little nosegay of conceits, a very lump of 
salt, every verse has something in it that piques ; and then the dart in 
the last line is certainly as pretty a sting in the tail of an epigram, for so 
I think you critics call it, as ever entered into the thought of a poet.' — 
' Dear Mr. Bickerstaff,' says he, shaking me by the hand, ' everybody 
knows you to be a judge of these things ; and to tell you truly, I read 
over Roscommon's translation of Horace's " Art of Poetry " three several 
times before I sat down to write the sonnet which I have shown you. 
But you shall hear it again, and pray observe every line of it ; for not 
one of them shall pass without your approbation : 

" ' When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine — ' 

' That is,' says he, ' when you have your garland on ; when you are 
writing verses.' To which I replied, ' I know your meaning ; a meta- 
phor ?' — ' The same,' said he, and went on : 

" ' And tune your soft melodious notes — ' 

* Pray observe the gliding of that verse ; there is scarce a consonant in 
it ; I took care to make it run upon liquids. Give me your opinion of 

it,' ' Truly,' said I, ' I think it as good as the former.'—' I am very glad 

to hear you say so,' says he, ' but mind the next : 

" ' You seem a sister of the Nine — ' 

' That is,' says he, ' you seem a sister of the Muses ; for if you look into 
ancient authors, you will find it was their opinion, that there were nine of 
them.' — ' I remember it very well,' said I, ' but pray proceed.' 

* * * * * * 

" ' Pray observe the turn of words in these lines. I was a whole hour 



i6o English Literature. 

in adjusting of them, and have still a doubt upon me, whether in the sec- 
ond line it should be your song you sing, or, you sing your song. You 
shall hear them both : 

" ' 1 fancy when you sing your song, 

(Your song you sing with so much art),' 
or, 

" ' I fancy when your song you smg, 

(You sing your song with so much art),' " etc. 

Trifling of this sort must have been a delightful relief 
from the dull preaching of the other writers ; it was a 
new note to the people of those days, and while there have 
been plenty of writers who have amassed statistics, and 
have spoken in praise of virtue and in denunciation of 
vice, those who may be called amusing are still few. The 
Tatler began, doubtless, with no other plan in Steele's head 
than that of furnishing an entertaining paper; but when 
Addison joined him, as Steele said, " I fared like a dis- 
tressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his 
aid. I was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once 
called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on 
him." Addison very early announced his plan in the Spec- 
tator ; in the tenth number, after having described in 
earlier papers the imaginary club to which the Spectator 
belonged, he says that his publisher has told him that three 
thousand are published every day, with probably twenty 
readers of each copy, so that he boasts of an audience of 
sixty thousand. " Since I have raised to myself so great 
an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction 
agreeable, and their diversion useful ... to refresh their 
memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out 
of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the 
age is fallen. ... It was said of Socrates,* that he brought 

* A French translation of the Spectator (6 vols., Amsterdam, 1714-26), 
was entitled, Le Spedateur, ou le Socrate moderne, ou Von voit un portrait 
naif des mo&urs de ce siecle. 



English Literature. i6i 

philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men; and 
I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have 
brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools 
and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables 
and in coffee-houses. . . . 

" Sir Francis Bacon once observes, that a well-written 
book compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like 
Moses' Serpent, that immediately swallowed up and de- 
voured those of the Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as 
to think that when the Spectator appears the other public 
prints will vanish ; but shall leave it to my reader's con- 
sideration, whether, is it not much better to be let into the 
knowledge of ones-self, than to hear what passes in Mus- 
covy or Poland ; and to amuse ourselves with such writ- 
ings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, 
and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame 
hatreds and make enmities irreconcilable ?" 

The club which he described with such care in I*^os. 1, 
2, and 34 was doubtless intended for a sort of copy of the 
Athenian Society. It survived in many of the imitations 
of the Spectator, in the " Noctes Ambrosianae," and in the 
imaginary clubs of a number of magazines down to a very 
recent date. 

Addison had a great many arrows to his bow. At one 
time he ridicules ladies' head-dresses : " There is not so 
variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. Within 
my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thir- 
ty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great 
height, insomuch that the female part of our species were 
much taller than the men." 

Similar social playfulness may be found in Nos. 101, 
275, and 281. These papers certainly are not marked by 
startling humor, though they have served as models for 
countless imitators. However, Addison knew very well 



1 62 English Literature. 

what he was about, and never forgot that he was address- 
ing a mixed audience, composed of people with very dif« 
ferent tastes, and that to please this motley public he had 
to intersperse the serious discussion of such matters as 
the immortality of the soul, infidelity, Milton, with lighter 
papers that should catch the attention of frivolous readers. 
People who cared for nothing more serious than badinage 
about the twirling of fans, or the ridiculous size of hoops, 
or the placing of patches, had to be kept in good humor 
with an abundance of such material in order to make the 
Spectator a success. The light papers of this sort were 
always in good taste according to the canons of that age, 
and their number, though great, was not too large in view 
of the follies they attacked. 

There is one undeniable merit in the Spectator, and that 
is the endless variety of the subjects treated. The essays 
themselves will teach this better than the most copious 
extracts. 

V. The part that we should read last, and yet the one 
that has had a very important influence on English litera- 
ture, is the long discussion on Milton. We have already 
noticed the indifference with which that great poet was 
treated by his contemporaries and successors, and we have 
seen evidence of the neglect with which most of the great- 
est English writers were treated in this modern dispensa- 
tion. Yet already in the Tatler attention had been called 
to Bacon, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Milton, and Shakspere, but 
this was done by incidental references ; in the Spectator 
Addison set seriously to work to put Milton in his proper 
place. I say that we do not read these papers with de- 
light, and, in proof of this assertion, I beg leave to quote 
some of Addison's arguments in behalf of Milton's excel- 
lence. Take this, for instance : " The third qualification 
of an epic poem is its greatness. The anger of Achilles 



English Literature. 163 

was of such consequence, that it embroiled the kings of 
Greece, destroyed the heroes of Troy, and engaged all the 
gods in factions, ^neas's settlement in Italy produced 
the Caesars, and gave birth to the Roman Empire. Mil- 
ton's subject was still greater than either of the former ; 
it does not determine the fate of single persons or nations, 
but of a whole species." That is to say, Aristotle says an 
epic poem must be this, that, and the other. Milton's 
poem is this, that, and the other ; ergo, it is an epic poem. 
In other words, he was using in his arguments the lan- 
guage of the schools.* Aristotle lay heavy over all the 
modern literature, and Horace's "Ars Poetica" was look- 
ed upon by every educated person as little else than an 
inspired work. All Europe lay in intellectual bondage, 
not to Greece so much as to the Latin Greece, which bore 
somewhat the same resemblance to the original that Ger- 
man-silver does to the nobler metal, whose name alone, 
without the brightness, the domestic imitation has taken. 
Horace's dictum, " Ut pictura, poesis," was the first 

* In his own day, and later, however, Addison seemed to be making con- 
cessions to the eiferainacy of his age. Thus Dr. Johnson, in his " Life of 
Addison," says : "Had he presented 'Paradise Lost' with all the pomp 
of system and severity of science, the criticism would perhaps have been 
admired, and the poem still have been neglected ; but by the blandish- 
ments of gentleness and facility he has made Milton an universal favorite 
with whom readers of every class think it necessary to be pleased." 

Dr. Hurd (quoted in Knox's " Essays," No. 21) said : '• For what concerns 
his criticism of Milton in particular, and as to his own proper observation, 
they are, for the most part, so general and indeterminate as to afford but 
little instruction to the reader, and are not infrequently altogether frivo- 
lous" ! Nowadays one would hardly call them frivolous. 

Even towards the end of the last century, P. Stockdale said : " A sacri- 
legious contempt hath been expressed for that elegant critick's beautiful 
papers in the Spectator, on the 'Paradise Lost,' " — "Lectures on English 
Poets," i. 41 (180*7, but written ten or twelve years earlier). 



164 English Literature. 

commandment ; the next, imitate nature ; the third and 
last, everything must announce and assist the cause of 
virtue : it was in compliance with this rule that King 
Lear climbed into his throne again ; that the " Maid's 
Tragedy " became a comedy ; that even now we see in 
old-fashioned plays a fortune and a bride awaiting the 
hero when, at about a quarter to eleven o'clock, all the 
actors form a semicircle on the stage and the green cur- 
tain shows signs of animation. Life, we all know, from 
reading moralists, is full of disappointment ; the youth 
starts out to set the world right and to earn wealth while 
he is young enough to enjoy it, but we are told that he 
iinds his illusions destroyed on every side, that he loses 
his high ideals, and is content with comfortable compro- 
mise. We also instruct writers to paint life as they see 
it ; yet if one of them fails to make everything smooth at 
the end, and draws what we know to be the inevitable 
truth, we are disappointed, and we denounce the man who 
has learned his lesson as a foe to his kind. Possibly our 
grandchildren may find innocent amusement in discuss- 
ing us. 

At any rate, we do not make up our minds about the 
merit of a poem by the same processes as did those who 
read Addison's papers in the Spectator ^ we do not keep 
one eye on the pseudo-Latin critics and one on the text to 
find warrant for our opinions ; yet, in writing as he did, 
Addison simply followed the legitimate methods of his 
time. By a singular turn of fate, while he seemed to be 
blocking the way by this old-fashioned lumber, he was 
really smoothing the path for us. We shall see in a mo- 
ment how he did this. What prejudices Addison had to 
attack, besides those we have already seen, were such as 
we find in this passage from Dryden's dedication of his 
Juvenal and Persius (1692) : "As for Mr. Milton, whom 



English Literature. 165 

we all admire witli so much justice, his subject is not that 
of a heroic poem, properly so called : his design is the 
losing of our happiness ; his event is not prosperous, like 
that of all other epique works ; his heavenly machines are 
many, and his human persons are but two." That is the 
point ; I merely add this as a side-matter : " Neither will 
I justify Milton for his blank verse, though I may excuse 
him by the example of Hannibal Caro * and other Italians 
who have used it ; for, whatever causes he alleges for the 
abolishing of rhyme, . . . his own particular reason is 
plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent ; he had neither 
the ease of doing it nor the graces of it." Rap in, who 
held a position as a critic which no one of his successors 
has ever reached, said of Aristotle's laws : " There is no 
arriving at perfection but by these rules, and they certain- 
ly go astray that take a different course. . . . And if a 
poem made by the rules fails of success, the fault lies not 
in the art, but in the artist ; all who have writ of this art 
have followed no other idea but that of Aristotle ;" and 
of style : "What is good on this subject is all taken from 
Aristotle, who is the only source whence good sense is to 
be drawn, when one goes about to write." Addison, then, 
was compelled to prove that Milton was good by showing 
his conformity to Aristotelian rules, and this he did. 

We must remember that this superstitious respect for 
Aristotle is capable of very simple explanation. Our 
classical dictionaries tell us what that wonderful man ac- 
complished, but fully to recount his influence would be 
almost to rewrite mediaeval history. It filled not Eu- 
rope alone. One writer says of him : " Translated in the 
fifth century Qf-'the Christian era into the Syriac language 
by the Nestorians who fled into Persia, and from Syriac 

* Caro (1507-66) translated the " ^neid " into blank verse. 



1 66 English Literature. 

into Arabic four hundred years later, his writings furnish- 
ed the Mohammedan conquerors of the East with a germ 
of science, which, but for the effect of their religious and 
political institutions, might have shot up into as tall a tree 
as it did produce in the West ; while his logical works, in 
the Latin translation which Boethius, ' the last of the Ro- 
mans,' bequeathed as a legacy to posterity, formed the 
basis of that extraordinary phenomenon, the Philosophy 
of the Schoolmen. An empire like this, extending over 
nearly twenty centuries of time, sometimes more, some- 
times less despotically, but always with great force, rec- 
ognized in Bagdad and in Cordova, in Egypt and in 
Britain, and leaving abundant traces of itself in the lan- 
guage and modes of thought of every European nation, 
is assuredly without a parallel " (Blakesley, p. 1, quoted 
in G. H. Lewes's " Biographical History of Philosophy," 
i. 245). 

His position in Europe during the Middle Ages was 
most firm. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, at the opening of the 
play of that name, bids himself "live and die in Aristotle's 
works." " Aristotle's logic and physics, together with the 
Ptolemaic system of astronomy, were then considered as 
inseparable portions of the Christian creed" (Lewes, ii. 
378). "In 1624 . . . the Parliament of Paris issued a de- 
cree banishing all who publicly maintained theses against 
Aristotle ; and in 1629, at the urgent remonstrance of the 
Sorbonne, decreed that to contradict the principles of 
Aristotle was to contradict the Church ! There is an 
anecdote recorded somewhere of a student, who, having 
detected spots in the sun, communicated his discovery to 
a worthy priest : ' My son,' replied the priest, ' I have read 
Aristotle many times, and I assure you there is nothing of 
the kind mentioned by him. Go rest in peace ; and be 
certain that the spots which you have seen are in your 



Engltsh Literature. 167 

eyes and not in the sun.' " He narrowly escaped being 
canonized for a saint. Bruno defied Aristotle, and said 
the earth revolved on its axis ; the Aristotelians affirmed 
that the earth did not move, and to confirm their views, 
after keeping Bruno six years in prison at Venice, they 
burned him in 1599. 

The authority which Aristotle exercised in physics and 
logic ran over into literature, as we shall see more fully 
when we come to discuss Addison's " Cato ;" and possibly 
our grandfathers clung the more obstinately to his literary 
laws because they had been compelled to give ground else- 
where.* The necessity, then, under which Addison labored, 
of proving everything by Aristotle's rules has left those 
essays, after receiving the praise of several generations of 
men, to gather dust on forgotten shelves. They are like 
disused fords over a stream, which we look at from a car- 
window as we rattle over the new huge bridge. They 
have become curiosities. 

As an example of this method, see the following extracts : 

Spectator, No. 273 : "Having examined the Action of 'Paradise Lost,' 
let us in the next place consider the Actors. This is Aristotle's Method 
of considering, first the Fable, and secondly the Manners ; or, as we gen- 
erally call them in English, the Fable and the Characters. 

" Homer has excelled all the Heroic Poets that ever wrote, in the Mul- 
titude and Variety of his Characters. 

* * * * * * 

" Virgil falls infinitely short of Homer in the Characters of his Poem, 
both as to their Variety and Novelty, ^neas is, indeed, a perfect Char- 
acter, but as for Achates, tho' he is stiled the Hero's Finend, he does noth- 
ing in the whole Poem which may deserve that title. Gyas, Mnesteus, Ser- 

* Then, too, science is more pliant because it deals with facts and rests 
upon reason. Literature is slower to change, because it depends to a 
great extent on the emotions. Religion obviously moves the last of all. 
Our intellect may perceive the truth, but the emotions are the home of 
prejudice. 



1 68 English Literaticre. 

gestus, and Cloanthus, are all of them Men of the same Stamp and Char- 
acter, 

****** 
"If we look into the Characters of Milton, we shall find that he has in- 
troduced all the Variety his Fable was capable of receiving. The whole 
Species of Mankind was in two Persons at the Time to which the Subject 
of his Poem is confined. We have, however, four distinct Characters in 
these two Persons, We see Man and Woman in the highest Innocence 
and Perfection, and in the most abject State of Guilt and Infirmity. The 
two last Characters are, indeed, very common and obvious, but the two 
first are not only more magnificent, but more new than any Characters 
either in Virgil or Homer, or indeed in the whole Cii'cle of Nature." 

Even when Addison so far rises above the taste of his 
age as to praise the old ballads, he wears the fetters of 
conventional criticism : 

Spectator^ No. 70 : "I know nothing which more shews the essential 
and inherent Perfection of Simplicity of Thought, above that which I call 
the Gothick Manner in Writing, than this, that the first pleases all kinds of 
Palates, and the latter only such as have formed to themselves a Avrong 
artificial Taste upon little fanciful Authors and Writers of Epigram. Homer, 
Virgil, or Milton, so far as the Language of their poems is understood, will 
please a Reader of plain common Sense, who would neither relish nor 
comprehend an Epigram of Martial, or a Poem of Cowley : So, on the con- 
trary, an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the Delight of the common Peo- 
ple, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not unqualified for the 
Entertainment by their Affectation or Ignorance; and the Reason is plain, 
because the same Paintings of Nature which recommend it to the most or- 
dinary Reader, will appear Beautiful to the most refined, 

" The old Song of ' Chevey Chase ' is the favorite Ballad of the common 
People of England ; and Ben Johnson used to say he had rather have been 
the Author of it than of all his Works." 

Then Addison quotes what Sir Philip Sidney said about 
it in his " Defence of Poesy," and goes on : 

" The greatest Modern Criticks have laid it down as a Rule, that an He- 
roick Poem should be founded upon some important Precept of Morality, 
adapted to the Constitution of the Country in which the Poet writes. 
Homer and Virgil have formed their plans in this view." 



English Literature. 169 

*' Earl Piercy's Lamentation over his Enemy is generous, beautiful, and 
passionate; I must only caution the Reader not to let the Simplicity of 
the Stile, which one may well pardon in so old a Poet, prejudice him against 
the Greatness of the Thought. 

' Then leaving Life, Earl Piercy took 
The dead Man by the Hand, 
And said, Earl Douglas, for thy Life 
Would I had lost my Land. 

' Christ ! my very heart doth bleed 

With Sorrow for thy Sake ; 
For sure a more renowned knight 

Mischance did never take.' 

That beautiful Line, Taking the dead Man hy the Hand, will put the 
Reader in mind of JEneas's Behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself 
had slain as he came to the Rescue of his aged Father." 

Spectator, No. 74 : "If this Song had been written in the Gothic Man- 
ner, which is the Delight of all our little Wits, whether Writers or Read- 
ers, it would not have hit the taste of so many Ages, and have pleased the 
Readers of all Ranks and Conditions. I shall only beg Pardon for such a 
Profusion of Latin Quotations ; which I should not have made use of, but 
that I feared my own Judgment would have looked too singular on such 
a Subject, had not I supported it by the Practice and Authority of Virgil' ' 

No. 85 : "I cannot for my Heart leave a Room, before I have thoroughly 
studied the Walls of it, and examined the several printed Papers which are 
usually pasted upon them. The last Piece that I met with upon this Occa- 
sion gave me a most exquisite Pleasure. My Reader will think I am not 
serious, when I acquaint him that the Piece I am going to speak of was 
the old Ballad of the Two Children m the Wood, which is one of the 
darling Songs of the common People, and has been the Delight of most 
Englishmen in some Part of their Age. 

" This Song is a plain simple Copy of Nature, destitute of the Helps and 
Ornaments of Art. The Tale of it is a pretty Tragical Story, and pleases 
for no other Reason but because it is a Copy of Nature. There is even a 
despicable Simplicity in the Verse ; and yet because the Sentiments appear 
genuine and unaffected, they are able to move the Mind of the most polite 
Reader with Inward Meltings of Humanity and Compassion. The Inci- 
dents grow out of the Subject, and are such as are the most proper to ex- 
cite Pity ; for which Reason the whole Narration has something in it veiy 



170 English Literature. 

moving, notwithstanding the Author of it (whoever he was) has deliver'd 
it in such an abject Phrase and Poorness of Expression, that the quoting 
any part of it would look like a Design of turning it into Ridicule, But 
though the Language is mean, the Thoughts, (as I have before said,) from 
one end to the other are natural, and therefore cannot fail to please those 
who are not Judges of Language, or those who, notwithstanding they are 
Judges of Language, have a true and unprejudiced Taste of Nature. The 
Condition, Speech, and Behaviour of the dying Parents, with the Age, In- 
nocence, and Distress of the Children, are set forth in such tender Circum- 
stances, that it is impossible for a Reader of common Humanity not to be 
affected with them. As for the Circumstance of the Robin-red-breast, it 
is indeed a little poetical Ornament ; and to show the Genius of the Au- 
thor amidst all his Simplicity, it is just the same kind of Fiction which 
one of the Greatest of the Latin Poets has made use of upon a parallel 
Occasion ; I mean that Passage in Horace, where he describes himself 
when he was a Child, fallen asleep in a desart Wood, and covered with 
Leaves by the Turtles that took pity on him." * 

* To judge what w^as thought of this appeal in behalf of simplicity, one 
may read what was said by Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Addison:" "He 
descended now and then to lower disquisitions ; and by a serious display 
of the beauties of ' Chevy Chase ' exposed himself ... to the contempt 
of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position of his criticism, that 
' Chevy Chase ' pleases, and ought to please, because it is natural, observes 
' that there is a way of deviating from nature by bombast and tumour, 
Avhich soars above nature and enlarges images beyond their real bulk ; by 
affectation which forsakes nature in quest of something unsuitable ; and 
by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness and diminution, by ob- 
scuring its appearances and weakening its effects.' In ' Chevy Chase ' 
there is not much of either bombast or affectation ; but there is chill and 
lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be told in a way that shall 
make less impression on the mind." 

Godwin, in his "Enquirer" (179*7), p. 353, showed that even he could 
be conservative on occasion ; he speaks of Addison's " far-famed and ri- 
diculous commentary upon the ballad of 'Chevy Chase.'" 

This was not the only time that he frowned on the new literature (p. 
326) : " If we compare the style of Milton to that of later writers, and par- 
ticularly to that of our own days, undoubtedly nothing but a very corrupt 
taste can commend it." 

Again, p. 339 : " The age of Charles II. is regarded by modern critics with 



English Liter at wre. 171 

The papers about Milton were naturally much admired 
at the time ; they came out on Saturdays, and so furnished 
Sunday reading of an agreeable kind. In Germany, how- 
ever, their influence was greater than at home. Up to this 
time German literature was something unknown ; yet, in 
its own way, Germany was going through the motions of 
having a literature with the same conscientiousness that 
our fellow - countrymen showed when every man who 
wrote was an American Pope, or an American Byron, or 
what not. Gottsched, a great man in the last century 
(1 700-66), has been much laughed at in this. He was a 
critic who, in his day, did good service to letters, but 
who is principally known to us now for having been a 
steadfast supporter of French influence in Germany, and 
as an opponent of Bodmer (1698-1783), of Zurich, who 
was the head of what was called the Swiss school. For 
many years the literary warfare between these two men 
raged furiously, until finally real literature appeared, when 
their discussions faded into obscurity. Yet they were by 
no means fruitless. The two schools agreed that poetry 
consisted in imitating nature, but the Leipsic school said 
that the way to do this was by following the dictates 
of reason, and they hence praised the French : the Swiss, 
on the other hand, affirmed that the reason had nothing to 
do with it ; that the poet must possess a creative power, 

neglect and scorn ; though perhaps no age, except that of George TIL, was 
ever so auspicious to the improvement of English prose ; [so far he com- 
mands assent] as none certainly has been adorned with higher flights of 
poetry." 

After all, the literary conservatism of such men as Yoltaire and God- 
win admits of simple explanation. Reason, which made them intolerant 
of the errors of mankind, and inclined them to become pohtical reformers, 
also made them intolerant of the misty, emotional side of the new Ro- 
manticism. They demanded, above everything, clearness. 



172 English Literature. 

which they called Phantasie, or the imagination ; that 
what was wonderful was not only a means, but also the 
end and object of poetry ; and they praised Milton and the 
Greeks, recommending that they be studied. Both parties 
agreed that poetry must be useful, instructive, didactic. 
The Swiss urged the study of the poets they praised ; 
Gottsched recommended the imitation of those he admired. 
The quarrel then went on, Gottsched decrying Milton, 
and Bodmer, who translated these essays in the Spectator, 
praising him. In time Gottsched was driven from the 
field, and, although Bodmer was not a man who was able 
to lead, he at least deserves credit for pointing out the 
path which Germany was to follow. Gottsched's plan 
was to let France be for Germany what Greece was for 
Rome, and he worked eagerly in support of this nocion ; 
but he succumbed, not before Bodmer, but before the cur- 
rent of the time. Bodmer's notion was that the imagi- 
nation should be the slave of utility, and that the way of 
accomplishing this was by the fable ; this is bringing up 
at the starting-point with a vengeance.* 

But outside of all this there lay on Gottsched's side, as 
was to be expected, contempt for Homer in comparison 
with Vergil, and exaggerated praise of Horace, Boileau, 
the French tragedians, and French literature. Bodmer, 

* The deliberate Avay in which fables were reached is expounded by 
Goethe. Ut pichcra^ poesis, was affirmed, and the poet began with com- 
parisons and descriptions. But the imitation of nature demands choice, 
and so he chose what was most striking ; this was what was most new, 
and finally what was wonderful. It was necessary that his work should 
have some improving influence on mankind, and, as there was nothing 
more wonderful than talking beasts, fables were selected as a favorite 
method of conveying instruction ; they combined nature, wonder, and 
utility. This all sounds, however, a good deal like an excuse for the fable, 
which was sufficiently attractive from its unfailing moral. Vide Goethe, 
" Dichtung und Wahrheit," i. 6. 



English Literature, 173 

and his ally Breitinger, on the other hand, were never 
tired of praising Homer, Ariosto, Tasso, Milton, and Sas- 
par, as they called Shakspere. This was the side that 
triumphed, and when finally Germany began to count in 
literature it was under the inspiration of England rather 
than of France that her authors began to write ; the main 
importance of Lessing, who derived much from England, 
as a critic was that he hopelessly expelled the imitation 
of classic French writers from Germany. Towards the 
end of the last century Germany repaid its debt with ac- 
cumulated interest, by carrying out the theories of the best 
English writers, by seeing and preaching the superiority 
of those who did not follow French models and by join- 
ing with them in the study of the long-neglected past. 
Later we shall come to see the influence which Biirger 
and Goethe, etc., had on Scott and Coleridge. Then we 
shall perceive more clearly that, when Addison was prov- 
ing how good the " Paradise Lost " was, with an air as 
if he were dancing the minuet, he was really aiding the 
work of the writers who, a century later, were abolishing 
all the traces of the school to which Addison belonged 
when he wrote formally. The discord between Gottsched 
and Bodmer seems, in some respects, like a tempest in a 
teapot ; but it was really the foreboding of a great rev- 
olution. Bodmer tried to compress the whole inspiration 
of " Paradise Lost " within the six lines of a fable and 
its twenty lines of moral, but, naturally enough, he failed 
in this attempt to bottle the ocean. 

So long as we bear in mind that these crude discussions 
were the beginning of a momentous reform in literature, 
they acquire an importance which otherwise we should 
be only too ready to deny them. They were not a mere 
interchange of prejudices, they were the first dim grop- 
ings after better things. We must remember that scarcely 



1/4 English Literature. 

anything is ludicrous in itself except any person's belief 
that in him alone does wisdom reside. What was most 
strongly impressed upon these German writers, as, indeed, 
upon Addison himself, was the great need of rudimentary 
education, and the desirability of finding rules which 
might be of universal application ; and since they made 
these out of the remarks of critics rather than out of the 
study of original writers, they very soon fell into confu- 
sion. At all times, indeed, the didactic critic is in danger 
of being left behind by the intellectual movements of his 
time. The critics stand up for precedent, and creative 
writers try to improve on precedent. This, however, 
leads us far away from Addison and his solemn remarks 
on Milton. 

We have seen how, when he was most formal, and was 
defining the epic by the rules of Aristotle, he was uncon- 
sciously paving the way for another method of thinking 
and writing. In those papers about Sir Roger de Cover- 
ley he was, to a considerable extent, laying the foundations 
of the English novel. At that time fiction was in an un- 
promising condition. In No. 37 of the Spectator we find 
a list of books which a lady had collected, and it is inter- 
esting to make use of this glimpse which Addison gives 
us of the life of the time. Of novels, we find here " Cas- 
sandra," " Cleopatra," " Astrsea," " The Grand Cyrus," 
"Pembroke's Arcadia," a volume mysteriously referred 
to as " a book of novels," " Clelia," Mrs. Manley's " The 
New Atalantis," a book which no lady would have in 
her library now, and Steele's "Christian Hero" — for 
the most part, books which no one would read now ex- 
cept from a sense of duty. At this time, Richardson 
(1689-1761) was still in a printing-ofiice, Fielding (1707- 
54) a child, and Smollett (1721-71) not yet born. In 
other words, what we know as the English novel did 



English Literature. 175 

not exist. It would be too much to say that Addison 
founded it by his little sketches in the Spectator. To 
give him all the credit for it would be unfair. Other 
causes contributed, which I shall speak of in a moment, 
but Addison helped it in two ways : first, by drawing 
those many little scenes of real life which keep the Spec- 
tator ever fresh before us ; and, secondly, by aiding the 
general uplifting of the bourgeoisie into prominence. As 
we have seen, it was imagined that nothing but kings and 
very high nobles were deserving of a writer's attention, in 
the time of the tales of chivalry and the heroic drama. 



When the comic writers began to write about citizens, it 
was with the object of holding them up to the scorn of 
the nobility. The women were represented as vicious, 
and the men as ridiculous. They were looked upon as 
fair game for the wits. As in time the political power of 
the citizens made itself felt, they began to be esteemed fit 
subjects for fiction. So long as the only persons who are 
prominent are lords, dukes, and earls, they will be the only 
persons who are reflected in what we may call recognized 
literature. We must remember that underneath the stra- 
tum of literature with which we are supposed to be fa- 
miliar as a part of our education, there are the chap-books, 
the ballads, the stories Avhich in their time have delighted 
the populace, and which were only frowned upon by those 
eminent persons who deigned to give them any attention. 
These writings show the directions of popular taste — not, 
I trust, its amount. 

When Addison drew such scenes as Sir Roger at the 
theatre — 

Spectator^ No. 335 : " We convoy'd him in safety to the Play-house, 
where, after having marched up the Entry in good order, the Captain and 
I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the Pit. As soon as the 
House was full, and the Candles lighted, my old Friend stood up and 



1^6 English Literature. 

looked about him with that Pleasure, which a Mind seasoned with Hu- 
manity naturally feels in itself, at the Sight of a Multitude of People who 
seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common Enter- 
tainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old Man stood up in 
the Middle of the Pit, that he made a very proper Center to a Tragick 
Audience. Upon the entring of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me, that he 
did not believe the King of France himself had a better Strut. I was 
indeed very attentive to my old Friend's Remarks, because I looked upon 
them as a Piece of natural Criticism, and was well pleased to hear him 
at the Conclusion of almost every Scene, telling me that he could not 
imagine how the Play would end. The while he appeared much concerned 
for Andromache ; and a little while after as much for Hermione ; and was 
extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus. 

*' When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate Refusal to her Lover's 
Importunities, he whisper'd me in the Ear, that he Avas sure she would 
never have him ; to which he added, with a more than ordinary Yehe- 
mence, You can't imagine, Sir, what 'tis to have to do with a Widow. Upon 
Pyrrhus his threatning afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his 
Head, and muttered to himself, Ay, do if you can. This Part dwelt so 
much upon my Friend's Imagination, that at the close of the Third Act, 
as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my Ear, These 
Widows, Sir, are the most perverse Creatures in the World. But pra}', 
says he, you that are a Critick, is this Play according to your Dramatick 
Rules, as you call them ? Should your People in Tragedy always talk to 
be understood ? Why, there is not a single Sentence in this Play that I 
do not know the Meaning of. 

" The Fourth Act very luckily begun before I had time to give the old 
Gentleman an Answer : Well, says the Knight, sitting down with great 
Satisfaction, I suppose we are now to see Hector's Ghost. He then re- 
newed his Attention, and, from time to time, fell a praising the Widow. 
He made, indeed, a little Mistake as to one of her Pages, whom at his first 
entering, he took for Astyanax ; but he quickly set himself right in that 
Particular, though, at the same time, he owned he should have been very 
glad to have seen the little Boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine 
Child by the Account that is given of him. Upon Hermione's going off 
with a Menace to Pyrrhus, the Audience gave a loud Clap ; to which Sir 
Roger added. On my Word, a notable young Baggage ! 

•' As there was a very remarkable Silence and Stillness in the Audience 
during the whole Action, it was natural for them to take the Opportunity 
of these Intervals between the Acts, to Express their Opinion of the Play- 



English Literature. lyj 

ers, and of their respective Parts. Sir Roger hearing a Cluster of them 
praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them, that he thought his 
Friend Pylades was a very sensible Man ; as they were afterwards applaud- 
ing Pyrrhus, Sir Roger put in a second time ; And let me tell you, says he, 
though he speaks but little, I like the old Fellow in Whiskers, as well as 
any of them. Captain Sentry seeing two or three Waggs who sat near us, 
lean with an attentive Ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should 
Smoke the Knight, pluck'd him by the Elbow, and whisper'd something in 
his Ear, that lasted till the Opening of the Fifth Act. The Knight was 
wonderfully attentive to the Account Avhich Orestes gave of Pyrrhus his 
Death, and at the Conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody Piece of 
Work, thai; he was glad it was not done upon the Stage. Seeing after- 
wards Orestes in his raving Fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and 
took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an Evil Conscience, adding, 
that Orestes, in his Madness, looked as if he saw something." 

— When, I say, he drew such scenes as this, he was uncon- 
sciously setting a model for future novelists. I do not 
mean that he deliberately chose one of a dozen different 
ways of describing the scene, and that later writers, seeing 
his success, determined to write in the same way ; but, 
rather, that he wrote in the manner that was natural to 
him, and that this was the English way when unaffected 
by the deliberate copying of other people. So far as it is 
safe or possible to distinguish the distinctive characteris- 
tics of the different countries of Europe, one of the main 
qualities of English literature is this semi - humorous ob- 
servation — we find it in Chaucer, Shakspere, Addison, 
Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Sterne, Jane Austen, 
and in the first novel of the " Franklin Square Library" 
on which our hand happens to fall. We are so accustomed 
to it, that we do not fairly notice it until we have been 
occupying ourselves with something else, just as we do 
not observe the freshness of the open air until we come 
out into it from a close room. We are struck by it, as we 
are struck by a certain logical coherence and sense of form 
in the French ; by the poetical flavor of the imaginative 

8* 



178 English Literature. 

writings of the Germans, and by the tremendous passion 
which the Russian writers are bringing into literature. 
These are faint and crude generalizations, to be sure, like 
our notions of a German with a round face, blue eyes, and 
light hair ; or a sallow Frenchman ; or a red-cheeked 
Englishman — but we are surprised, and justly surprised, 
when we make a mistake in a foreigner's nationality. 
When we come to speak of Defoe we shall make further 
investigations into the paternity of the English novel ; 
here we must confine ourselves to the discussion of Addi- 
son's contribution to this wonderful result, which we have 
before us in the Spectator. And this includes, besides the 
practical work we see in the sketches of Sir Roger de 
Coverley and his friends, the attention he has given to the 
life he saw about him. One of the most important things, 
indeed, for a writer to do is to speak of what he knows, 
and he is pretty sure to know best what he has himself 
seen. Addison aided this movement in every way in his 
power. He wrote about life as he saw it, and his Spec- 
tator is a classic work. He succeeded, too, without very 
definitely knowing what he was doing. He was not try- 
ing to be a realist ; he aimed at improving the minds and 
tastes of his contemporaries, and to get a hearing he made 
himself simple ; he showed them what they were, how 
they acted in society, what their foibles were, and put his 
little word of advice in here and there, where its influence 
would be felt before the reader knew that he was swallow- 
ing moral medicine. 

That the influence of the Spectator was great we learn 
from a number of contemporary sources. Tickell said of 
it (preface to his edition of Addison) : " The world be- 
came insensibly reconciled to wisdom and goodness, wheij 
they saw them recommended by him with at least as much 
spirit and elegance, as they had been ridiculed for half a 



English Literature. 179 

century." Sir Richard Blackmore said : "It was with 
great Pleasure and Satisfaction that Men, who wished well 
to their Country and Religion, saw the People delighted 
with Papers which lately came abroad as daily Entertain- 
ments ; in which rich Genius and polite Talents were 
employ'd in their proper Province, that is, to recommend 
Virtue and regular Life, and discourage and discounte- 
nance the Follies, Faults, and Vices of the Age ; . . . Nor 
was it without good Effect, for the People in some measure 
recover'd their true Relish, and discern'd the Benefit and 
moral Advantages as well as the Beauties of these daily 
Pieces, and began to have profane and immodest Writings 
in Contempt." * 

Dr. Thomas Rundle said of Addison : " To him we owe 
that swearing is unfashionable, and that a regard to relig- 
ion is become a part of good-breeding. ... He had an art 
to make people hate their follies, without hating them- 
selves for having them; and he showed gentlemen the 
way of becoming virtuous with a good grace." This was 
the credit which belongs to the moral reforms of the Spec- 
tator ; as some one has said, it brought the laughers on 
the side of virtue, and it did more, in that it taught wise 
moderation. It checked licentiousness and it withheld 
bigotry, the two opposing forces. It civilized England 
more, perhaps, than any one book. 

As to that form of success which interests publishers 
first of all, we know that this was very satisfactory. At 
the beginning, 3000 copies were published ; this number 
rapidly grew to 20,000, and sometimes to 30,000 — equal, 
doubtless, to 200,000 now — and the bound volumes, in oc- 
tavo, at two guineas, and then a pocket^edition, were sold in 
enormous quantities. Each edition consisted of 10,000 

* " Essays," ii. 268 (ed. I'Zl'?), 



i8o English Literature. 

copies, and more than 9000 copies of the first four volumes 
had been sold before the Spectator ceased to appear. It 
was sold at one penny until August, 1712, when a tax was 
imposed on papers, and its price was doubled. Its fame 
spread to the Continent ; in France, Marivaux wrote 
French Spectators (1722); in Germany, there were a 
number of imitations ; * Italy, too, followed in the same 
path.f All of these were inspired, in the first place, by 

* The first tp appear in German was the Discurse der Maler (Zurich, 
1721). This was written by a society of which Bodmer and Breitinger 
were at the head {vide Biedermann, " Geschichte des XVIIF'" Jahrhun- 
derts," II. i. 429). He says that Gervinus mentions two earlier ones, the 
Vernunftler (1713) and the Lustige Fama (1718), but that he has not 
been able to find anything about them. Ber Patriot (Hamburg, 1724) 
speedily followed, and Gottsched's Vernunftige Tadlerinnen ( Leipsic, 
1725). 

The history of these publications in Germany closely resembles that of 
the English originals and imitations. Five thousand copies of the Patriot 
were sold, besides bound volumes. There were three editions of Gott- 
sched's periodical. The subjects treated and the ends desired were very 
much the same. There was the same zeal, for, according to Biedermann, 
there were 182 publications started before 1760. In literary merit no com- 
parison can be made. 

Even in Russia the influence of the Spectator was felt. "Again, the first 
satirical review to appear in Russia, which she [Catherine II.] secretly 
patronized, followed in the footsteps of Addison's Spectator " [Academy, 
March 25, 1882, p. 210, in a translation of a letter to Le Livre, making 
mention of Veselowski's book on the influence of Western civilization on 
Russian literature). 

Alexander Romald, "Tableau de la Litterature Russe" (St. Petersburg, 
1872), p. 67, mentions " une foule de publications periodiques qui parurent 
de 1769 a 1774. . . . Le meilleur de tons dtait le Peintre, dans lequel des 
articles de critique et de polemique alternaient avec d'autres ayaut un fond 
plus serieux." 

And vide Courri^re, "Histoire de la Litterature ContemporaiBe en Rus- 
sie" (Paris, 1875), p. 37. 

f Gozzi's Osservatore (1761-62). 



English Literature. i8i 

the translations of the Spectator itself into those different 
tongues. Indeed, nothing like its popularity had been 
known before in English literature, and the only thing 
which can be compared with it is the wonderful success 
of the " Waverley Novels." What it did in England in 
establishing a form of literature which is barely extinct 
yet, we shall soon see. Dec. 6, 1712, it ceased to appear, 
although it was resumed June 18, 1714, appearing thrice 
a week till Dec. 20 of the same year, when it finally closed. 
It was speedily followed by the Guardian^ which ap- 
peared, in fact, before the eighth volume of the Spectator, 
under the direction of Steele, who determined "to have 
nothing to manage with any person or party ;" but Steele 
was a philosopher by fits and starts, and political feeling 
ran so high that he soon gave up that paper and took 
up the Englishman, in which his fervor had full swing 
in attacking Swift's Examiner. The first volume of the 
Guardian contains many good essays by Berkeley, Pope, 
and Tickell, and the second many by Addison. 

In England, the number of successors of the Spectator 
was very great, although now the very names of most are 
forgotten. The Censor, the Hermit, the Surprize, the Si- 
lent Monitor, the Inquisitor, the Pilgrim, the Restorer, the 
Instructor, the Grumbler, the Freethinker, the Anti-theatre, 
the Weaver, etc. Even the names of those for which Ad- 
dison and Steele wrote are known only to scholars, and 
very properly, for these are but the fringes of scholarship ; 
the main thing is to understand what the Essay was, and 
what part it has played in English literature. Therefore 
we shall not take up the essays at any length until we 
come to Dr. Johnson's Rambler; that does stand out above 
the general crowd. And since numbers are sometimes of 
use in com^eying information, I will add that between 
1709 and 1809 there were two hundred and fourteen pub- 



1 82 English Literature. 

lications of the sort we have been discussing ; one hundred 
and six between the Tatler and the Bambler, forty-one 
years ; and between the Rambler and 1809 just the same 
number ; in the fifty-nine years since then they have ceased. 
Yet the fame and the influence of the Spectator survive. 
These light papers, which Addison wrote with doubtless 
but little understanding of their value, now belong to the 
English classics, while what he regarded as his most im- 
portant contribution to literature, his " Cato," lives only 
in a few quotations, and is mentioned now principally as 
one of the few specimens in English literature of a play 
written according to the rules. To be sure, these rules 
had but little direct influence on English literature, but 
no one can understand the character of the drama of that 
nation without knowing what it was not^ and in what 
ways it differed from that of other countries. 



English Literature. 183 



CHAPTER V. 

We know that it was flung in the face of the English 
dramatists that they did not regard the rules, which for 
three hundred years were spoken of in Europe with as 
much reverence as the Ten Commandments, and were 
obeyed with incomparably more zeal. It may be worth 
while, then, to take " Cato " for our excuse, and under the 
shield of his good name to examine these rules, and see 
what it was that moulded the drama of parts of continen- 
tal Europe from the revival of letters down to a time 
within the memory of men still living. To do this it is 
not necessary to go into the history of the miracle-plays 
and mysteries which abounded in the Middle Ages, under 
slightly varying forms, in Italy, France, Spain, England, 
and Germany ; we may turn at once to the early attempts 
to revive the drama at the time of the Renaissance, for all 
testimony seems t?o show that the drama revived as a whol- 
ly independent thing amid the general resuscitation of 
literary interests. Indeed, the fact that then plays were 
first written more with a desire to have a full showing in 
the various departments of intellectual work than from an 
intense feeling seeking dramatic expression — just as some 
people buy the books which they think they ought to care 
for, and not the books they want — this fact, I say, poi- 
soned the stream at its fountain-head. 

I quote from Mr. Symonds's " Renaissance in Italy " 



184 English Literature. 

some interesting and acute remarks on the conditions 
necessary for the full and natural development of the 
drama. He says : "Three conditions, enjoyed by Greece 
and England, but denied to Italy, seem necessary for the 
poetry of a nation to reach this final stage of artistic 
development. The first is a free and sympathetic pub- 
lic, not made up of courtiers and scholars, but of men of 
all classes — a public representative of the whole nation, 
with whom the playwright shall feel himself in close rap- 
port. The second is a centre of social life — an Athens, 
Paris, or London — where the heart of the nation beats and 
where its brain is ever active. The third is the perturba- 
tion of the race in some great effort, like the Persian war, 
or the struggle of the Reformation, which unites the peo- 
ple in a common consciousness of heroism. Taken in com- 
bination, these three conditions explain the appearance of 
a drama fitted to express the very life and soul of a puis- 
sant nation, with the temper of the times impressed upon 
it, but with a truth and breadth that renders it the heri- 
tage of every race and age. A national drama is the 
image created for itself in art by a people which has ar- 
rived at knowledge of its power, at the enjoyment of its 
faculties, after a period of successful action. Concen- 
trated in a capital, gifted with a common instrument of 
self-expression, it projects itself in tragedies and comedies 
that bear the name of individual poets, but are, in reality, 
the spirit of the race made vocal." * 

But the Italians saw great tragedies in antiquity, and so 
sat down to compose great tragedies for modern times. 
Let us not laugh at them ; we see the same error about 
us, unless, indeed, we happen to be committing it our- 
selves. When we hear or say that the " Nibelungen Lied " 

* "Renaissance in Italy," v, 112. See also his "Greek Poets" (Amer. 
ed.), ii. 1 et seq, 



English Literature. 185 

or the " Chanson de Roland " is quite as fine as the 
" Iliad " and the " Odyssey," we are making our bow to 
antiquity, and attempting to show that we are as good as 
the Greeks, and that our early writers are as good as 
theirs. We are using old-fashioned standards of meas- 
urement — or at least misusing them. 

The first regular Italian tragedy was Trissino's " Sof o- 
nisba," which was finished in 1515, and six times printed 
before its first performance in 1562.* Trissino was an 
eager advocate of the improvement of Italian literature, 
but he saw only one way of accomplishing his object — ^. e., 
by copying the ancients. He wrote an epic poem, " Italia 
Liberata," in blank verse, in which he turned his back on 
the method adopted by Ariosto and subsequently followed 
by Tasso, and tried his best to imitate Homer. This was 
a complete failure ; but his " Sofonisba," although it 
really had no success on the stage, did have an influence 
on dramatic literature. It is to be noticed that it was 
printed six times before it was acted : this statement suf- 
fices to show the difference between a real drama and a 
literary drama, just as now a certain number of English 
poets write plays in book-form and fancy they are improv- 
ing the English stage, forgetting that fitness for represen- 
tation is the only true test of a play, as readableness is of 
a novel. Certainly, if the English drama is to be revived, 
this will be done by plays on the boards, not by books on 
the shelves. 

In his " Sofonisba," Trissino f followed very closely 

* So Mr. Symonds. Elsewhere it is stated that it was performed in 
1515, but not repeated until 1562. It has been acted in Italy within a few 
years. 

t Trissino was not alone ; Rucellai wrote his " Rosmunda " in generous 
rivalry. Symonds (" Renaissance in Italy," v. 236) says : " These two dear- 
est friends, when they were together in a room, would jump upon a bench 
and declaim pieces of their tragedies, calling upon the audience to decide 



1 86 English Literature, 

what AYe took to be the practice of the ancients. I have 
already spoken of the enormous influence of Aristotle ; it 
was now about to apj^ear in a new quarter. Trissino wrote 
an " Ars Poetica," made up out of Aristotle and Horace, 
and applied these rules with the utmost rigor in this play. 
The rules, or the three unities, as they were afterwards 
called, were the unity of action — which different writers 
took to mean a number of different things, as we shall 
presently see — unity of time, which demanded that the 
action should take place within twenty-four hours ; and 
unity of place, which was taken to mean that the scene 
should not be transferred beyond the palace, temple, or 
dwelling where the action was supposed to occur.* The 
only one of these rules which commanded universal as- 
sent was the unity of time, for the unity of place was 
interpreted in various ways, sometimes being taken as 
forbidding change of scene within the limits of an act. 
All of these rules were followed in their literal sense by 
Trissino in his "Sofonisba," and they were introduced 
into France by Mairet, who wrote a " Sophonisba," which 
was produced at Rouen in 1629. Before this the French 
plays had coquetted with the unities, and many of them 
were closely modelled on those of Seneca ; but the " So- 
phonisba," coming with all the authority of Italy behind 
it, firmly established the rules on the French stage. All 

between them on the merits of their plays." The " Kosmunda " was acted 
at about the same time with the " Sofonisba." It is not now easy to de- 
tect which was the better. The "Kosmunda" is unmistakably a dull play. 
The author, lest his characters should break some rule by action, keeps 
them apart, declaiming to echo-like confidants, 

Speron Sperone, Giraldi, Dolce, while they studied Greek originals, all 
agreed that Seneca had much improved on the Greek methods. Their 
plays contained no tragic solemnity, no lyric beauty — nothing but mangled 
plots and cold declamation. 

* Vide Simpson's "Dramatic Unities," p. 8. 



English Literature. 187 

the great French tragedies, down to Victor Hugo's " Crom- 
well " and " Hernani," were written in obedience to them. 
Even Voltaire was one of their warmest defenders. 

The history of the growth and decay of the unities is 
full of interest, as illustrative of the general course of 
pseudo-classicism in literature. Their value was one of 
the most important of the tenets of this school, and it was, 
in France at least, one of the longest-lived. As was just 
stated, they were not absolutely novel in France ; when 
they were firmly planted there, the ground had been al- 
ready prepared for their reception. Mellin de St. Gelais 
had translated Trissino's " Sof onisba," with the dialogue 
in prose and the chorus alone in verse, and this rendering 
had been acted before Henry H., at Blois, in 1559. There 
had been, too, other versions of this play.* Moreover, the 
dramatists of the Pleiad, cir. 1550, in their transcripts of 
ancient tragedies, had observed the unities, more, doubt- 
less, from imitation than from deliberate effort. There 
were other dramatists whose influence lay in the oppo- 
site direction ; the most important of whom was Hardy 
(1560-1631), who wrote six or eight hundred plays — for 
autlM)rities differ. Fontenelle says that this statement 
will cease to surprise any one who reads them. Hardy 
nobly disregarded the unities in many of his dramas, in 
this following the Spanish rather than the classic or the 
Italian stage. For, as Lope de Vega said, before he 
wrote he locked up with six keys the " Ars Poetica," and 
turned Terence and Plautus out of his study.f The medi- 

* Vide Ebert, " Entwickelungsgeschichte der franz. Tragodie," p. 138. 
f " y quando he de escribir una Comedia, 

Encierro los preceptos con seis Haves ; 

Saco a Terencio y Plauto de mi estudio, 

Para que no me den voces, que suele 

Dar gridos la verdad en libros mudos." 

— Arte de Hacer Comedias. Obras sueltas iv. 406. 



i88 Eiiglhh Literature. 

ocrity of Hardy threw the victory into the hands of his 
antagonists, who could bring antiquity and all the au- 
thority of Italy against his lax principles and crude 
workmanship. Catherine de Medicis, it must be remem- 
bered, opened the court to the more refined influences of 
Italy, and dramatic companies from that country gave per- 
formances in France between 1570 and 1577. 

There were many indications of the impending rule of 
the unities. Mairet, before he wrote his " Sophonisba," 
in the preface to his "Silvanire" (1625), urged their 
adoption because, he said, they would enable the specta- 
tor to see the action of the play as if it really were go- 
ing on before him, and hence would be spared the trouble 
of trying to make out how the actor, speaking at Rome in 
the last scene of the first act, should be in Athens at the 
beginning of the next act. * Segrais says it was Chape- 
lain who made the change by recommending it to Mai- 
ret ; f and doubtless the authority of Chapelain, who was 
a minister, and of high repute as a man of taste, weighed 
for something, but it was far from being all. In politics 
he, with all of his generation who had received the new 
learning, was busy in extirpating the remains of feudal- 
ism, the memories of chivalry, the vestiges of the Middle 
Ages, and the romantic drama stood for all these things 
with them, and they sturdily maintained what they took 
to be the modern side. Discipline, which, as Fournier 
says (" Litterature Independante," p. 22), is the character- 

* Vide Bizos, " :^tude sur Mairet," p. 125. 

t " Ce fut Monsieur Chapelain qui fut cause que Ton commen9a ^ ob- 
server la regie des 24 heures dans les Pieces de Theatre (et parce qu'il 
faloit premierement le faire agreer aux Comediens, qui imposoient la loi 
aux Auteurs) ; II [doubtless, Chapelain] communiqua la chose ^ M. Mai- 
ret, qui fit la Sophonisbe, qui est la premiere Piece ou cette r^gle est 
observee." — Artec, i. 161. 



English Literature. 1=89 

istic quality of the seventeenth century in France, con- 
quered here as everywhere. No one man made the 
change : it was a widespread movement, although it 
might have been seriously modified, if not thwarted, had 
Hardy been a man of real genius. 

As we shall see, Corneille could not withstand the gen- 
eral sentiment of his contemporaries, though in his heart 
he yearned for the freer treatment and more copious ma- 
terial of the Spanish stage. The critics for once got 
matters into their own hands, and they clipped the wings 
of poetry. Trissino, Malherbe, and Voltaire were all rather 
critics than poets.* 

In order to know what the unities were, let us see what 
Aristotle said on the subject, and how his words were in- 
terpreted by different writers. 

Aristotle, in his " Poeticon," said : " Tragedy is the imi- 
tation of a grave .and complete action possessing magni- 
tude ; (clothed) in pleasing language, independently of the 
(pleasurable) ideas (suggested) in its other parts ; set forth 
by means of persons acting, and not by means of narra- 
tion ; and through pity and fear effecting the purification 
of those passions. . . . The most important, however, of 
these (requisites) is the setting together of the inci- 
dents" (vi.). 

"It will then be granted that tragedy is the imitation 
of a perfect and complete action, possessing magnitude ; 
for there may be a whole which has no magnitude. But 
a whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an 
end. The beginning is that which, of necessity, follows 
nothing else, but after which something is bound to be, or 
to be produced. The end, on the contrary, is that which 
naturally comes after something else, either necessarily or 

* See Prolss, " Geschichte des neueren Dramas," ii. 1, 45 ; and Ebert, 
vassim. 



190 English Literature. 

for the most part, but after which there is nothing else. 
The middle, however, is that both before and after which 
there is something else. It is necessary, then, that well- 
combined fables should neither begin whence, nor end 
when, chance may dictate, but should be composed accord- 
ing to the above-mentioned forms " (vii.). 

" It is fit, then, that — just as in other imitative arts the 
imitation is the imitation of one single thing — the story, 
also, since it is the imitation of an action, should be that 
of one whole and complete action ; and that the parts of 
the transactions should be so combined that, any of them 
being transposed or taken away, the whole would become 
different and disturbed." 

The first question one asks after reading this, even in 
English, is, what does it mean ? And there has been no lack 
of answers. Corneille said : " I maintain that the unity 
of action consists, in comedy, in the unity of the intrigue, 
or of the obstacles offered to the designs of the principal 
personages ; in tragedy, in the unity of peril, whether it 
be that the hero sinks under it or extricates himself from 
it. I do not, of course, maintain that it is not allowable 
to admit several perils in the one, and several intrigues or 
obstacles in the other, provided that, in freeing himself 
from the one, the personage falls of necessity into the 
others " (" Troisieme Discours "). 

Voltaire ( " Remarques sur le Troisieme Discours " ) : 
" We think that Corneille here understands by unity of ac- 
tion and of intrigue a principal action, to which the various 
interests and the private intrigues are subordinate, form- 
ing a whole composed of several parts, all tending to the 
same object." 

La Harpe says : " Aristotle desires, and all the legislators 
on the subject have followed him in this, that a character 
be the same at the end as at the beginning." 



English Literature. 191 

Lessing, more clearly (" Hamburg. Dramaturgie," 38) : 
" There is nothing that Aristotle has more strongly rec- 
ommended to the poet than the proper composition of his 
story. . . . He defines the story as the imitation of an 
action, and the action is, in his opinion, the connection 
of the incidents. The action is the whole, the incidents 
are the component parts of the whole ; and as the excel- 
lence of any complete whole depends upon the excellence 
of its several parts and their combination, so also is a 
tragic action more or less perfect in proportion as the 
incidents — each for itself and all conjointly — are in har- 
mony with the j)urposes of the tragedy." It is clear that 
there is no great divergence of opinion about this rule : 
the playwright is directed to observe coherence in his 
story, to make it of one piece, so to speak, and this no 
one doubts ; and although La Harpe's rule is scarcely to 
be found in Aristotle, it is so undeniable that it goes into 
circulation without question. 

The unanimity with which this rule was obeyed inspired 
full belief in the second rule, that of unity of time, 
which was taken to mean that the whole action must be 
supposed to take place within twenty-four hours. This 
inconvenient rule depended on these remarks of Aristotle: 
*' Moreover, [the epos differs from the tragedy], as regards 
length ; for the latter attempts, as far as possible, to re- 
strict itself to a single revolution of the sun, or to exceed 
it but little, whereas the epos is indefinite as regards time, 
and in this respect differs from tragedy " (v.). 

No sooner had the unities become the law in France 
than Corneille began to chafe under them. In 1636 (" Troi- 
sieme Discours ") he wrote : " For my part, I find that there 
are subjects so hard to confine within the limits of so short 
a time, that not only would I allow them the full twenty- 
four hours, but I would even take advantage of the liberty 



192 English Literature. 

accorded by the philosopher to exceed them in some meas- 
ure, and would without hesitation go as far as thirty 
hours." Voltaire, in commenting on this, says : " The 
unity of time is founded not only on the laws of Aris- 
totle, but on those of nature. It would, in fact, be extreme- 
ly proper that the action should not extend beyond the 
time required for representation. ... It is clear, how- 
ever, that this merit may be sacrificed to a much greater 
one — that, namely, of interesting the audience. If you 
can cause more tears to flow by extending your action 
twenty-four hours, take a day and a night, but do not go 
beyond that. If you did, the illusion would be too much 
impaired." 

The attempt of Corneille to secure thirty hours failed, 
however, and the dramatists bound themselves up by the 
rigid rule of twenty-four hours. Into what trouble their 
pedantry brought them we may see by examining a sin- 
gle instance, Corneille's "Cid." The writer said : "The 
unities must be preserved, there can be no doubt about 
that, but we must have thirty hours." Let us see what 
in this case thirty hours brought forth. The heroine's 
father gives the hero's father a box on the ear. He 
is consequently challenged to a duel by the hero, and 
killed. The heroine, although she still loves him, demands 
his life in satisfaction from the king, who orders him to 
join the campaign against the Moors. From this he re- 
turns victorious, having performed many valiant deeds, 
and having made two of their kings prisoners. The im- 
placable heroine still demands his life, whereupon he is 
commanded to meet another lover in single combat, the 
condition being that she shall marry the survivor. He 
is naturally successful in this ; he disarms his rival, spares 
his life, and the heroine at last agrees to forgive him. 
Corneille saw that the incidents were rather crowded, 



English Literature. 193 

and that the " Cid " well deserved two or three days of 
rest after his campaign before being called upon to fight 
another duel. " But there," he says, " you see the incon- 
venience of the rule." As the Academy said in passing 
judgment on the play: "The poet, in trying to observe 
the rules of art, has chosen rather to sin against those of 
nature." After that reproof Corneille followed the rules 
more closely, and throughout the French classic drama we 
find an impossible and inartistic huddling of incidents 
under the compulsion of this obiter dictum of Aristotle's. 
It would have been natural, one might think, to examine 
the Greek plays and see how they dealt with the problem, 
and whether they were ever allowed greater license. But 
against this we may put the comparative ignorance of 
Greek even in such a man as Voltaire ; and, secondly, the 
superstitious adoration of Aristotle, which was so great 
that, if any violations of his rules had been pointed out, 
the answer would doubtless have been made that those 
who broke his rules were bad Greeks.* 

Yet when Lessing began his attack on the rules, about 
one hundred years ago, he did what should have been 
done long before: he went back to the Greek plays. And 
what do we find in them ? Take the " Agamemnon," for 
instance ; in that play, as Schlegel put it, "we have the 
whole interval between the destruction of Troy and the 
hero's arrival at Mycenae. In the ' Trachinla ' of Sopho- 
cles the voyage from Thessaly to Euboea is made three 
times. In the ' Suppliants ' of Euripides, during one cho- 
ral ode an army is supposed to march from Athens to 
Thebes to fight a battle, and the general returns victo- 
rious." The appeal to the Greek dramatists was conse- 
quently misleading. 

* As indeed happened in France; vide Ogier, "Ancien Theatre Fran9ais," 
vol. viii. 



194 English Literature. 

Even more marked transgressions may be found. In 
the "Alcestis," that heroine and Hercules descend to the 
lower regions, and, although that journey is said to be easy 
and short, they returned thence, which is proverbially dif- 
ficult. 

Lessing said of the dramatists who obeyed the unities : 
*' It is true that these writers pride themselves on the most 
scrupulous regularity ; but they, are also the ones who 
either put so wicle a construction on their rules that it is 
scarcely worth while to call them rules at all, or they ob- 
serve them in so awkward and constrained a way, that one 
is more shocked to see them observed than if they were 
not observed at all." He takes Voltaire's "Merope" to 
pieces, and asks : " Of what use is it to the poet that the 
incidents of each act, supposing them really to happen, 
should not occupy more time than the performance of the 
act really demands ; and that this time, together with that 
allowed for the pauses, should not even extend to a full 
revolution of the sun ? Is that a reason for supposing 
that he has observed the unity of time ? He has obeyed 
the words of the rule, but not the spirit; for what he puts 
into one day might possibly be performed in that time, 
but no sensible man would do it in that time. Physical 
unity of time is not enough, moral unity must be there 
too;' for if this is violated every one will notice it; where- 
as the other may be destroyed without general notice." 

To us, whose minds are made up, these remarks, which 
coincide with our way of thinking, seem not only convinc- 
ing, but also sufficiently obvious; yet, as I have said, for 
three hundred years they were not spoken in France, and, 
as we have seen, every means was taken to urge the oppo- 
site views by precept and example. 

Having seen the fervor with which these opinions were 
upheld, we shall not be surprised to learn that in the " Poet- 



English Literature. 1 95 

icon " of Aristotle there was no mention of the third rule, 
the unity of place.* The invention of this must be put 
down to the account of the French critics, on which side 
of the account the reader must decide for himself. Cor- 
neille groaned beneath this rule, and urged that the whole 

* No one will for a moment imagine that the trifling fact that Aristotle 
never said anything that has come down to us that can be perverted into 
support of the unity of place made that law any the less binding. D'Au- 
bignac, in his "Pratique du The'atre" (1669), said: "Les ignorants et 
les personnes de faible esprit, s'imagineut que I'unite de lieu repugne k 
la beaute des comedies. . . . Aristote, dans ce qui nous reste de sa Poe- 
tique, n'en a rien dit, et j'estime qu'il la negligee, k cause que cette regie 
etait trop connue de son temps." 

On the unity of time, he wrote in favor of limiting the action to twelve 
hours : " La raison en est certaine et fondee sur la nature du poeme drama- 
tique, car ce poeme, comme nous avons dit plusieurs fois, n'est pas dans 
les recits, mais dans les actions humaines, dont il doit paraitre une image 
sensible. Or, nous ne voyons point que regulierement les hommes agis- 
sent avant le jour, ni qu'ils portent leurs occupations au-dela ; d'oii vient, 
que, dans tous les etats, il y a des magistrats etablis pour reprimer ceux 
qui vaguent la nuit, naturellement destinee au repos." 

Riccoboni, in explaining the horrors and bloodshed of the Shaksperian 
plays, says (" Historical and Critical Account of Theatres in Europe," Eng- 
lish transl., p. lYl): " The principal character of the English is that they 
are apt to be plunged in contemplation [they " are gentle, humane, extreme- 
ly polite, but generally pensive to excess "], as I said before. It is owing 
to this their pensive Mood that the Sciences of the most sublime Nature 
are by the Writers of that Nation handled with much Penetration, and that 
Arts are carried to that Pitch of Perfection which they are now arrived at ; 
because their native Melancholy supplies them with that Patience and Ex- 
actness which other Countries have not. ... To pursue my reasoning ; I be- 
lieve that were there to be Exhibited on their Stage Tragedies of a more 
refined Taste, that is, stripped of those Horrors that sully the stage with 
Blood, the audience would perhaps fall asleep. The Experience which 
their earliest Dramatic Writers had of this Truth, led them to establish 
this Species of Tragedy, to raise them out of their contemplative Moods, 
by such bold Strokes as might awaken them." 



196 English Literature. 

of a play should be represented within the limits of one 
town. " Of course," he says, " I should not wish the stage 
to represent a whole town ; that would be somewhat too 
vast, but merely two or three particular places enclosed 
within its walls." Voltaire held a similar view. He says : 

" We have before said that the imperfect construction 
of our theatres — ^handed down from the days of our bar- 
barism to the present time — has made the rule of unity of 
place almost impossible. The conspirators cannot con- 
spire against Caesar in his own cabinet ; people do not 
talk about their most secret interests in a public place ; 
the same scene cannot represent at once the front of a 
palace and that of a temple. The stage ought to be so 
arranged as to bring before the eye all the particular 
places where the scene is laid, without injury to the unity 
of place. Here a part of a temple ; there the vestibule of 
a palace ; a public square ; streets in the background — in 
short, everything necessary for presenting to the eye all 
that the ear ought to hear. The unity of place is the 
whole view which the eye can embrace without difficulty." 

But this is a clumsy contrivance. Even this accumula- 
tion of architectural monuments, like those on the cover 
of the atlases, representing civilization, can be of but 
little service, and we need not wonder that in his " Bru- 
tus " Voltaire was forced to resort to the transparent de- 
vice of having two of the characters '•''supposed to have 
quitted the audience-chamber and to be in another apart- 
ment in Brutus's house." In his "Semiramis," the tomb 
of Ninus is brought into the drawing-room ! However, it 
is idle work killing the dead. The unities have gone to 
the curiosity chamber, along with the Ptolemaic system of 
astronomy and the notion that all languages are derived 
from the Hebrew. The theory had its strong side, how- 
ever, although in Italy it helped to produce nothing of 



English Literature* 197 

importance. In France it inspired a love for smoothness of 
form and neatness of execution. It is, of course, impossible 
to imagine what would have been the course of literature 
in France if it had not prevailed there, because it did pre- 
vail there from seeming abundantly good to those who 
were in power.* Kemember that it stood for light and 
truth in contrast with what seemed to the men of that day 
the detestable barbarism of the Middle Ages, and that the 
task of that time, as of all times, was to attain higher civ- 
ilization. Their sole beacon was the light from antiq- 
uity, the rays of which were supposed to be concentrated 
in Aristotle, and they obeyed him as earnestly as pos- 
sible. Their yearnings for greater freedom they probably 
repressed as proofs of an unregenerate nature, and if we 
find their classic plays dull, it is easy to see what they 
thought of ours. Here is Voltaire describing an English 
play — and bear in mind that Voltaire was not only one of 
the ablest men of his time, but of any time, and that, al- 
though he was not averse to misrepresentation when 
there was anything to be got by it, he was intellectually 
honest. He says (" Introduction to Semiramis," CEuvres, 
V. 194) : *'I am very far from justifying the tragedy in 
everything : it is a rude and barbarous piece. . . . The 
hero goes mad in the second act, and his mistress in the 
third. The prince slays the father of his mistress, pre- 

* La Motte and Fontenelle, among others, however, agreed in detesting 
the unities, long monologues, confidants, and the use of rhyme in plays, 
and were consequently cordially hated by their contemporaries, notably by 
the critics. 

Fontenelle defended the moderns; we too shall become ancients, he 
says, " on nous admirera avec exces dans les siecles k venir." — " Dieu salt 
avee quel mepris on traitera en comparison de nous les beaux-esprits de 
ce temps-1^, qui pourront bien ^tre des Americains." — Sainte-Beuve, " Cau- 
series du Lundi," iii., 332. 



198 Knylhli Literature. 

tending to kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into 
the river. They dig her grave on the stage ; the grave- 
diggers jest in a way worthy of them, with skulls in their 
hands ; the hero answers their odious grossness by ex- 
travagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile, one of the 
characters conquers Poland. The hero, his father, and 
mother drink together on the stage ; they sing at table, 
they wrangle, they fight, they kill; one might suppose 
such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a drunk- 
en savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregular- 
ities, which to this day make the English theatre so ab- 
surd and so barbarous, there are to be found in ' Hamlet,' 
by a yet greater incongruity, sublime strokes worthy of 
the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken a 
delight in collecting within the brain of Shakspere all that 
we can imagine of what is greatest and m^ost powerful, 
with all that rudeness without wit can contain of what 
is lowest and most detestable." 

One is tempted here to go on to a comparison between 
English and French tragedy ; but this would take us 
wholly away from our path. It concerns us now to 
consider simply the fate of these laws. In France, they 
survived the general wreck of the Revolution ; Sundays 
were banished, and the week brought into the decimal 
system ; * religion was abolished ; kings and aristocrats 
were murdered — but, as Brandes pointed out, " While in 
all external matters France is inclined to change, and in 
following this inclination knows no limits or moderation, 
it is yet in all literary matters exceedingly conservative, 
recognizing authority, maintaining an academy, and ob- 
serving moderation. The French had overthrown their 

* It will be remembered that this demolition of the Sabbath is some- 
times brought up in all seriousness as an argument against substituting 
the metre and the gramme for the yardstick and ounce. 



Eiigluh Literature. 199 

government, hanged or banished the odious aristocrats, 
established a republic, carried on war with Europe, done 
away with Christianity, decreed the worship of a Supreme 
Being, deposed and set up a dozen rulers, before it occurred 
to any one to declare war against the Alexandrine verse, 
before any one ventured to question the authority of Cor- 
neille or Boileau, or to feel any doubt that the observance 
of the three unities was absolutely essential to the preser- 
vation of good taste. Voltaire, who had but little respect 
for anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath, 
yet respected the Alexandrine. He turned tradition topsy- 
turvy ; made his tragedies attacks upon the powers they 
had hitherto supported, namely, the right of kings and of 
the church ; from many of them he excluded love, which 
previously had formed the main interest in real tragedy ; 
he tried to follow in Shakspere's footsteps : but he did 
not venture to shorten his line by a single foot, to make 
the least alteration in the conventional method of rhym- 
ing, or to make the action last more than twenty-four 
hours, or to lay it in two different places in one play. 
He did not hesitate to wrench the sceptre from the hand 
of kings, or to tear the mask from the face of priests, but 
he respected the traditional dagger in Melpomene's hand 
and the traditional mask before her face." 

Voltaire, it must be remembered, had a very sincere de- 
testation of wilfulness and obscurity, and great love of neat 
workmanship and literary polish. In good part through 
his authority, the unities survived in France until Victor 
Hugo began to write plays.* The preface to " Cromwell " 



* It must not be forgotten how often the rules were questioned, and with 
ever-o-rowino- force, by successive dramatists in the last century. It was 
probably Voltaire's influence that maintained them so long, for there 
were many able men, less authoritative than he, however, who were 
attackuio- them by precept and example. The full histoi-y of the pro- 



200 Engl'hh Literature. 

(1827) was a violent attack upon them, but it was over his 
" Hernani " that the fight was reall}^ fought and the vic- 
tory won. Of course there had been men who objected 
to the rigid rules, such as La Motte (1672-1731), but his 
objections were without influence ; it was Victor Hugo 
who fairly broke these chains. Feb. 25, 1830, this play 
was first acted, amid wild confusion. Theophile Gautier, 
in his " Histoire du Romantisme," says : 
" How can any one imagine that this line, 
" Est-il minuit ? — Minuit bientot," 

should have called forth a tempest, and that the fight 
lasted three days ? The phrase seemed trivial, familiar, 
indecorous : a king asks what's o'clock, like a private citi- 
zen, and they tell him, as if he were a ploughboy, mid- 
night.'''' 

The rules fell with a crash into unrecognizable ruin. 
In Italy, a play of Manzoni's, " II Conte di Carmagnola " 
(1820), was the first to break the charmed regulations, but 
Victor Hugo destroyed the citadel after the outposts had 

tracted discussion concerning them belongs rather to the study of French 
than of EngHsh hterature. ( Vide Charles Formentin's " Essai sur les 
Origines du Drame Moderne en France." Paris, 1879.) The most impor- 
tant of these writers were Diderot, Beaumarchais, Mercier, Sedaine, etc. 
It yet remains true that, while these men skirmished bravely, Victor Hugo 
routed the enemy and won the victory. 

In his " Bijoux ludiscrets," chap, xxxviii., Diderot said, speaking of the 
classic stage : " En admirez-vous la conduite ? Elle est oi'dinairement si 
compliquee que ce serait un miracle qu'il se fut passe tant de choses en si 
pen de temps. La mine ou la conservation d'un empire, le mariage d'une 
princesse, la perte d'un prince, tout cela s'execute d'un tour de main. 
S'agit-il d'une conspiration, on I'ebauche au premier acte, elle est liee, 
affermie au second ; toutes les mesures sout prises, les obstacles leves, les 
conspirateurs disjjoses au troiiieme; il y aura incessament une revolte, un 
combat, peut-etre une bataille rangee, et vous appelez cela : conduite, in- 
teret, chaleur, vraisemblance." 



English Literature. 201 

surrendered. The length of the struggle between reason 
and reasonableness shows how hard it is to expel bigotry, 
pedantry, obstinacy, and all the respectable vices. 

To return to Addison's " Cato," which was published in 
1713: its only interest is, so to speak, an archaeological one, 
as an example of a rare phenomenon, and as a proof of the 
spread of waves of thought. We see that it took about two 
hundred years for the form devised by Trissino to reach 
London, it having reached Paris in one hundred and twenty 
years ; and the wave that overwhelmed France made but 
a slight disturbance in England,* for, at the most, less 
than a dozen plays can be counted among those written 
after this model, and Otway's "Venice Preserved" and 
Congreve's " Mourning Bride " may well be counted out. 
The only other at all well known, excepting Lillo's " Fatal 
Curiosity," is Johnson's "Irene" (1749), and if Johnson's 
fame depended on that play his name would have been 
lost long since.f 

* Vide " Lectures on Poetry," delivered 1711, at Oxford, by Dr. Trapp, 
of whom Dr. Young wrote, " Satire I., Works," iii. 106 : 

" If at his title Trapp had dropp'd his quill 
Trapp might have passed for a great genius still. 
But Trapp, alas ! (excuse him if you can) 
Is now a scribbler, who was once a man." 

This, however, probably refers to his political pamphlets. He warmly de- 
fended the unities. 

f Yet it is curious to observe that two thirds of Browning's plays ob- 
serve the unity of time — viz., "Pippa Passes," "The Return of the 
Druses," "A Blot on the Scutcheon," " Colombe's Birthday," " Luria," 
and " In a Balcony." The " Blot on the Scutcheon " was written in five 
days, as was also " The Return of the Druses " [vide Academy, Dec. 24, 
1881). It would be hard to say that Browning deliberately sought this 
unity. It doubtless came from what w^e may call the instantaneousness 
of his intellectual processes. He almost always chooses for his subject 
a single mood or passion. 



202 Ilh glish Liter aiui'-e. 

What you will have noticed here, as I trust elsewhere, 
is the close connection between the literary tenets of the 
time and the general condition of thought. To be sure, 
these do not always precisely coincide. We find the regu- 
lar drama existing throughout the French Revolution, only 
giving way later before the attacks of the Romanticists, 
yet, in general, the widespread views of a period affect 
immediately the literary methods ; in this case, too, the 
first leisure was devoted to making the drama over again. 
The task of our ancestors was establishing civilization and 
driving out barbarism, and what seemed to them one of 
their first duties was expelling barbarism from literature. 
What they thought barbarous, the Gothic architecture, 
mountains, and certain forms of poetry, we have learned 
to enjoy. If we bear these things in mind, and watch the 
growth of modern feelings during the last century, we 
shall get to understand the present better. There is, too, 
an advantage in studying a period of unbrilliant perform- 
ance, that it gives an opportunity to see how oj^inions 
grow. 

As to the play itself, and the excitement it produced, 
it was enormously admired. The political condition only 
added to the excitement ; party feeling ran high, and, as 
Macaulay said, it was hoped that " the jDublic would dis- 
cover some analogy between the followers of Caesar and 
the Tories, between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, 
and between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties 
of Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm 
round Halifax and Wharton." The Tories, however, were 
not to be outdone ; each side determined to find nothing 
but compliments for itself in the political setting. Pope 
w^rote that the applause " of the Whig party, on the one 
side, was echoed back by the Tories on the other, and af- 
ter all the applauses of the opposite faction, Lord Boling- 



English Literature. 203 

broke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into his box, and 
presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as 
he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well 
against a perpetual dictator." 

Bishop Berkeley was at the performance with Addison, 
" and two or three more friends in a side-box, where we 
had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and 
champagne, w^ith which the author (who is a very sober 
man) thought it necessary to support his spirits. . . . Some 
parts of the prologue, written by Mr. Pope, a Tory, and 
even a Papist, were hissed, being thought to savour of 
Whigism, but the clap got much the better of the hiss " 
{Academy, Sept. 6, 1879). 

Even in Dr. Johnson's time, the "Cato" had come to 
be regarded as " rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, 
rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language 
than a representation of natural affections, or of any prob- 
able or possible in human life." And Dr. Johnson said : 
"About things on which the public thinks long, it com- 
monly attains to think right ;" and now, having thought 
longer, the public has attained to think that it will not 
read " Cato," and I need dwell on it no longer. 

Its effect was to lend the authority of Addison's name 
to this formal way of writing plays. In Germany, Gott- 
sched * wrote " Der Sterbende Cato " (written 1731, pub- 

* Gottsched was by no means satisfied with Addison's work ; vide Ricco- 
boni, "Account of Theatres" (Engl, transl), 226 et seq. : "I was at first 
advised literally to translate Addison's ' Cato,' but as I was resolved to 
stick to the rules of the drama, I found he fell far short in regularity to 
the French tragedy. The English are indeed great masters both of thought 
and expression ; they know wonderfully well how to sustain a character, 
and enter surprisingly into the heart of man ; but as to the conduct of the 
Fable they are very careless, as appears from all their dramatic composi- 
tions," etc. ; and " the scenes are very ill-connected together ; the actors 
go and come without any apparent reason ; sometimes the stage is quite 



204 English Literature. 

lished 1732), in imitation of tliis and a French play by 
Deschamps (1715), and in England the tradition of the 
Elizabethan drama was rendered fainter than ever. If we 
are inclined to condemn Addison, we must remember that 
what he was really endeavoring to supersede was the 
exaggerations of Dryden, Lee, and their contemporaries 
of the post-Restoration stage. In the place of rant he put 
a sort of decorous eloquence. The play reads not so much 
like the work of a poet as like that of an intelligent and 
able man, who has deliberately made up his mind to write 
a tragedy, and who has put a number of dignified thoughts 
into the most elegant language he could find. Addison's 
intelligence was sufficient to save him from gross faults, 
but not enough to inspire him to write a real tragedy. 

empty," etc. Hence he combined the English and the French models, and 
wrote his own " Cato." 

Gottsched's play went through ten editions by 1757 (Koberstein, v. 286, 
note 10). Freiherr von Bielefeld said : "Es sei eine Tragodie, die in alien 
Sprachen der Welt schon sein wiirde " (Koberstein, he. cit.). 



English Literature. 205 



CHAPTER VI. 

I. The never-ending question suggests itself here, What 
is real poetry ? We cannot help wondering how it is that 
such frigid propriety as fills the " Cato " should have given 
full satisfaction to our grandfathers and grandmothers. 
And while we may be willing to acknowledge that the 
"Cato" was admired quite as much because Addison 
wrote it as for anything else, this does not explain its long 
success. The question, too, comes up again with regard 
to Pope, who was the head of the poetical school of his 
time. Nowadays the reading world may be said to be 
divided into classes, one of which avers that Pope was 
a great poet, while the other wonders how it is possible 
to call him a poet at all. It may well be that these 
contending foes will very nearly agree concerning what 
they find in Pope ; what divides them is the proper defini- 
tion of poetry. It would be a difiicult matter to furnish 
this. Various attempts have been made to do it, but I 
know none that satisfies every one, and there would seem 
to be this objection to all definitions : that they must be 
made by judging past methods of writing poetry, and next 
year there may be found a new way which will not accord 
with the rule. Moreover, they will be made to suit but a 
single period. In fact, however, this discussion would not 
only take us into a very confused region, but it would bo 
wanton straying from the work we have now before us, 



2o6 English Literature. 

which is looking at what was liked in the last century, and 
trying to find its relation to what went before and what 
has followed it.* 

In general, we are inclined to make such a definition 
of poetry as shall include the work of the poets we 
like and exclude most of the rest. Those who demand 
that poetry shall be compact of imagination, that it shall 
arouse or charm the emotions, rather than give a cooler 
intellectual delight, may give Pope all the credit his 
admirers claim for his intelligence — to state it broadly — 
without consenting to place him among the singers who 
delight us in a very different way. As contrasted with 
these singers, as we may call them, among whom any one 
may place his favorite — say Keats, Byron, Shelley, Tenny- 
son, Browning, or Mrs, Browning — Pope may be called a 
talker, or rather a converser. He is the best of converg- 
ers, and there is a great deal implied in that title : wit, 
tact, knowledge of men and the world, wisdom, a clever 
tongue — and all of these things Pope had. In short, he is 
the flower of the period which we are studying ; not neces- 
sarily the greatest man, for Dryden leaves upon the reader 
an impression of magnitude, of being greater than what he 
accomplished, which we do not feel about Pope, who was 
perfectly successful in putting what was best of himself 
into literature, and into classical literature. The aim of 
the period in which he lived was to let reasonableness, 
common-sense, have full sway, and nowhere did it find 
fuller expression in English literature than in Pope. 

The period was an interesting one in respect to the man 
of letters, whose position, however, was not secure, although 
the Spectator had created a large reading public. It may 

* In the Contemporary Review for December, 1881, and Jamiarv, 1882, 
are two interesting articles by Mr. Alfred Austin, discussing Mr. Matthew 
Arnold's definition of poetry as a criticism of life. 



EngllsK Literature. 207 

be worth while to see how it was that writers gradually 
acquired independence. We have seen how in the reign 
of Queen Anne, the Augustan age of English literature, 
as it is called, authors . were rewarded ; but, while it is 
probably true that this was in some measure due to the 
fact that their patrons had a disinterested love of litera- 
ture, it must not be forgotten that the higher rewards 
were given for value received. Addison's various appoint- 
ments were in return for work accomplished with the pen, 
and the politics of the writers of this time had much to do 
with their success. Dryden's satires had shown (as I have 
said) how great was the power of an able pen, and those 
who were in authority sought to get these valuable allies 
on their side. Thus Locke, who had been suspected of 
connection with Shaftesbury's treason, had left England 
to avoid trouble in 1683, and had returned after the arri- 
val of William of Orange in 1689, was within a week 
offered an ambassadorship, which he declined, and was 
soon made commissioner of appeals. What literature 
could have done for him, we may perceive from the fact 
that he sold the copyright of his famous "Essay" for 
£30. This place was of the nature of a sinecure, and 
the pay, £1000 a year. Locke, who had shown great in- 
terest in the practical matters of politics, worked hard at 
the duties of the position when these were enlarged, but 
resigned it when he felt unable to give them full atten- 
tion. He was succeeded by Prior, the poet. Prior, the 
story runs, was the son of a joiner, who, when his father 
died, fell under the charge of his uncle, who intended to 
let his education end with studying under the famous Dr. 
Busby, at Westminster school ; but the Earl of Dorset 
happened to see him reading Horace, which so gratified 
him that he sent him to Cambridge. In 1691, when twen- 
ty-fi^ve years old, he was sent as secretary to the embassy 



2o8 Kuijluh Literature, 

to the congress at the Hague, and again, in 1697, to another 
embassy to negotiate the treaty of Ryswick ; the next 
year he was given the same office at the court of France. 
Before succeeding Locke he was under-secretary of state 
for a short time. Sir Isaac Newton was, in 1695, by the 
influence of his friend Charles Montague, earl of Halifax, 
made warden of the mint, with a salary of £600 ; and in 
1699 be succeeded to the mastership, with a salary of from 
£1200 to £1500, and this position he held until his death 
in 1727. This position was given to him not merely in 
admiration of his mathematical labors, but partly in return 
for his defence of the authorities of the University of Cam- 
bridge before the high-commission court, where they were 
summoned to answer for their refusal to admit Father 
Francis Master of Arts on the king's (James II.) manda- 
mus, without his taking the oaths. He was twice elected 
to Parliament. Steele, as we have seen, held various posi- 
tions under government. From 1694 to 1699 Defoe was 
employed as accountant to the commissioners of the glass- 
duty for his aid to the government, and Defoe wrote a 
countless number of political writings. Indeed, we are only 
too ready to overlook most of the political work which lit- 
erary men did in those days. Prior not only wrote a num- 
ber of odes (one of them, 1706, in Spenser's stanza, and 
avowedly in imitation of his style), epistles, prologues, etc., 
full of political references ; he also contributed to the Ex- 
aminer^ a Tory journal. Congreve sang victories, mourned 
the death of Queen Mary, and was made a commissioner 
for licensing hackney-coaches. Vanbrugh went to France 
as a sort of spy, and was locked up in the Bastile for nearly 
two years. Indeed, it would be hard to find one of the 
writers of this time who did not devote his pen to the ser- 
vice of one of the political parties, and sometimes of both : 
Ambrose Philips, Rowe, Gay, Stepney, Eusden, Hughes, 



English Literature. 209 

Gartli, Arbuthnot, Blackmore, Tickell, Shadwell — the list 
could be made very long — were all of them rewarded in 
one way or another : the instances I have given will show 
what I mean by this. 

That the writers were necessary to the politicians is 
clear from the rewards they received, and is explained by 
a brief examination. The debates in Parliament, it will 
be remembered, could not at that time be reported. Even 
in 1745, they were printed in the GentUmaii^s Magazine 
as the " Discussions in the Senate of Lilliput." The Lords 
w^ere called Hurgoes ; Lord Hardwicke, Hurgo Hickrad ; 
the archbishop of Oxford, the Archbishop of Oxdorf. In 
the Clinabs (Commons), Wyndham was Yamdahm ; Fox, 
Feaucs, etc. Degulia stood for Europe, Mildendo for Lon- 
don, Blefuscu for France, the Jacomites for the Jacobites. 
In the Scots' Magazine, Sir Robert Walpole was Marcus 
Tullius Cicero ; Pulteney, Cato, etc. Consequently, the 
only way in which the public could be kept in close rela- 
tions with Parliament — and in the last resort the support 
of the public was necessary — was by means of the news- 
papers, pamphlets, political poems, etc. Ministers them- 
selves wrote for the papers, and they were compelled to 
secure some authors as their allies, as well as to keep oth- 
ers in their pay to prevent their going over to the oppo- 
site camp. Nowhere do we find the whole current of in- 
trigue between politicians and authors more clearly related 
than in Swift's " Journal," or more distinctly illustrated 
than by his career. He was Vicar of Laracor, in Ireland, 
when he wrote his first political tract, the " Dissensions in 
Athens and Rome" (1*701), in which the politicians of his 
time were disguised under ancient names, with application 
to the existing state of affairs. In this paper he urged a 
just balance of power at home as necessary for preserving 
the freedom of the state. This was in 1701, when Swift 



210 Englisli Literature. 

was thirty-four years old. Halifax and Somers, when they 
had ascertained who wrote it, received him with great 
warmth and many promises of support — indeed, proposed 
him for a bishopric. But they could not keep their prom- 
ises, which filled Swift with bitter disappointment ; so 
that, when the Whigs went out and the Tories came in, he 
hastened from the obscurity of Ireland to London in or- 
der to see for himself how matters stood. Naturally his 
appearance on the scene was of great service to him. The 
absent are always wrong, the French say, and the absent 
are pretty sure not to be in the way of picking up promo- 
tion which is eagerly contended for by many applicants. 
The Whigs were profuse with apologies and new prom- 
ises, and the Tories, eager for such an ally, tempted Swift 
in every way in their power. He had, meanwhile, given 
further proof of his ability, though scarcely of respect for 
the conventional side of ecclesiasticism, by writing his 
" Tale of a Tub " ( taking the hint, doubtless, from a 
writing of Fontenelle's, " History of Mero and Enegu " — 
Rome and Geneva). Harley's flatteries gave Swift great 
satisfaction. He says : " He has desired to dine with me. 
... I mean he has desired me to dine with him on Tues- 
day, and, after four hours' being with him, set me down at 
St. James's coffee-house in a hackney-coach. All this is 
odd and comical, if you consider him and me. He knew 
my Christian name very well ;" and Oct. 14, 1*710 (three 
days later) : "I stand with the new people ten times bet- 
ter than ever I did with the old, and forty times more 
caressed." Consequently Swift went over to the "new 
people," and he was of infinite service to them. Of his 
ability it is hard to speak too highly, and his change of 
party by no means implies moral worthlessness. Such 
a change nowadays is commonly understood. Mr. Glad- 
stone, for instance, is by no means a type of the im- 



English Literature. 



211 



moral renegade, yet his position at present is in direct op- 
position to that which he took on entering public life, yet 
we can see and respect the steps by which he changed his 
¥iews. We can also see and watch Swift's, in his state- 
ment : " They call me nothing but Jonathan ; and I said 
I believed they would leave me Jonathan as they found 
me, and that I never knew a ministry do anything for 
those whom they make companions of their pleasures : 
and I believe you will find it so ; but I cannot." What 
he wanted is definitely stated, and his life was embittered 
by his failure, although his friends did their best for him, 
but in vain. I do not care to sit in judgment on Swift's 
political changes, I wish merely to show the relations be- 
tween writers and politicians at this time. Each side, in 
making. a bargain, naturally tried to make the best bargain 
it could. There is, of course, no reason why a man of let- 
ters should be averse to putting his pen to political writ- 
ing — and in many ways at this time it was of service by 
securing free discussion — but on literature the effect was 
not so unmistakably beneficial. Authors had to be obse- 
quious to the political leaders, and they were continually 
bringing themselves into notice by dedicating their works 
to those in authority.* Halifax, Bolingbroke, Godolphin, 
the Duke of Ormond, when in power, received dedica- 



* Cf. Schiller's dedication of " Dom Karlos ;" vide " Thalia," vol. i. (I'ZSY) : 

" DlTRCHLAUCHTIGSTER HeRZOG : 

" Gnadigster Herr, — Unvergesslich bleibt mir der Abend wo Eure Her- 
zogliche Durchlaucht Sich gnadigst herabliessen, dem unvollkommenen 
Versuch meiner dramatischen Muse, diesem ersten Akt Dom Karlos, einige 
unschatzbare Augenblicke zu schenken, Theilnehmer der Gefiihle zu 
werden, in die ich mich wagte, Richter eines Gemahldes zu sein das ich 
von Ihres Gleichen zu unterwerfen mir erlaubte," etc. 

Corneille dedicated his " Cinna " to a M. de Montauron for one thousand 
pistoles (Guizot," Corneille," p. 181). 



212 English Literature. 

tions as one nowadays receives Christmas cards. The first 
volume of the Spectator was dedicated to Somers ; the 
second, to Halifax ; the third, to Henry Boyle ; the fourth, 
to Marlborough ; the fifth, to Earl Wharton ; the sixth, 
to the Earl of Sunderland ; the seventh, to Mr. Methuen, 
English ambassador at the court of Savoy. These dedi- 
cations are not so cringing as some in the previous cen- 
tury, but they are very fulsome. Young, in his maturer 
years, excised from the later reprints of his poems the 
dedications he had written when he began his literary ca- 
reer. Pope, too, who denounced the habit warmly in his 
" Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," wrote in these terms about 
Halifax : 

" Proud as Apollo on his forked hill, 
Sat full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill ; 
Fed with soft dedication all day long, 
Horace and he went hand in hand in song." 

Thus, in a " Letter from Italy," Addison spoke to him of 
*' lines like Virgil's or like yours." And Congreve wrote: 

" had )'our Genius been to Leisure born, 
And not more bound to aid us than adorn ! 
Albion in verse with ancient Greece had vied, 
And gained alone a fame, which, then, seven States divide." 

Pope himself said of him, in his preface to the translation 
of Homer, " of whom it is hard to say whether the ad- 
vancement of the polite arts is more owing to his gen- 
erosity or his example." Pope goes on : 

" His library (where busts of poets dead 
And a true Pindar stood without a head) 
Received of wits an undistinguished race. 
Who first his judgment asked, and then a place : 
Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat, 
And flattered every day, and some days eat : 
Till grown more frugal in his riper days. 
He paid some bards with port and some with praise." 



English Literature. 213 

Yet, while Pope * did rap what was a great fault, we 
must not take these dedications too literally ; we should 
set down part of their language to mere formality, like 
that which is used in the ending of a letter, where one 
man calls himself the obedient servant of, it may be, his 
deadliest enemy. 

Another misfortune of this dependence of the writers 
on the government was this, that much of their time was 
taken up in work that could have been as well performed 
by some one else equally well. Possibly, however, this was 
better than starving to death, which, as we shall soon see, 
was the ever-ready alternative. Then, too, ministries went 
out and new parties went in, so that, although dancing at- 
tendance on ministers kept Swift from literature for four- 
teen years, the interval between the " Tale of a Tub " and 
" Gulliver," the enforced leisure which Addison enjoyed 
gave him an opportunity to write the Spectator. A more 
serious matter was the way in which even a man like Swift 
could be forced to bend his neck to the yoke to taste the 
sweets of flattery and power, and then be dismissed to live 
and die in Ireland, " like a poisoned rat in a hole," as he 
said. 

With the advent of the ministry of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, in 1721, the Augustan age of literature ceased, and 
those who wrote for a living dropped from the company 
of courtiers to the gutter, one may say almost without 
exaggeration. George the Second, like the rest of the 
Hanoverian kings, cared nothing for literature, and his 
minister was very indifferent to it, and when he came into 
power he had already condemned literary men as practi- 
cal politicians, very much as they have been condemned 
in this country in more recent times. Whatever writing 
he wanted done was intrusted to low scribblers, and that 
* And cf. Pope again in the Guardian^ No. 4. 



214 . English Literature. 

was not a great deal. With his accession to power, gov- 
ernment jiatronage ceased. It was not that one side went 
in when the other went out : they were all outs. The 
literature of the last century is full of references to the 
direful effects this change had on the fortunes of au- 
thors. Swift ("To Mr. Gay," 1731) calls him "Bob, 
the poet's foe." But, in general, the old arts of fascinat- 
ing the great were tried on him, though without success. 
Savage, whose life was full of ijiisery, after squandering 
whatever money he was able to get, published a panegyric 
on Sir Robert Walpole, for which he received the sum of 
twenty guineas; but that was a singular exception, mod- 
erate as the gift was. His friends, too, solicited AYalpole 
for the promise of the next place, not exceeding £200 a 
year, that should become vacant. The promise was made, 
with the statement that " it was not the promise of a 
minister to a petitioner, but of a friend to his friend." 
Yet the promise, whatever it might be called, was never 
kept. Savage tried writing a poem in honor of the 
Prince, but nothing came of it. The Queen, however, 
gave him a pension of £50 a year, which ceased at her 
death. These few lines from Dr. Johnson's life of him, 
which may well be read for the light it throws on the con- 
dition of literary men at that time, show to what stress 
writers were sometimes driven, though this abject penury 
was in great measure Savage's own fault: " He lodged as 
much by accident as he dined, and passed the night some- 
times in mean houses which are set open at night to any 
casual wanderers, sometimes in cellars, among the riot 
and filth of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble, 
and sometimes, when he had not money to support even 
the expenses of these receptacles, walked about the streets 
till he was weary, and lay down in the summer upon the 
bulk, or in the winter, with his associates in poverty, 



English Literature. 215 

among the ashes of a glass-house." During a considerable 
part of the time in which he was writing "Sir Thomas 
Overbury," " he was without lodging and often without 
meat ; nor had he any other conveniences for study than 
the fields or the streets allowed him ; there he used to 
walk and form his speeches, and afterwards walk into a 
shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, 
and write down what he had composed upon paper which 
he had picked up by accident." To be sure. Savage's 
habits were such as at any period of the world's history 
would have brought him to such straits, but his was not 
an exceptional fate. Steele, who, to be sure, was never a 
model of economy, died in want and obscurity in 1729. 
Savage, Steele, and Ambrose Philips were w^alking to- 
gether one evening, when they were met by a man who 
told them there were some suspicious-looking fellows in 
waiting at the end of the street, probably bailiffs, and 
urged any one who might have business with them to go 
home by some other way. They all turned and ran. 

Or take Thomson's life as that of a man who found pa- 
trons. He came to London, but his pocket was at once 
picked and his letters of introduction stolen. The blame 
for that, however, cannot be justly put on Sir Robert 
Walpole. He sold the manuscript of his "Winter" to 
buy a pair of shoes. It was dedicated to Sir Spencer 
Compton, whom he afterwards visited by request. He 
writes of this visit : " He received me in what they 
commonly call a civil manner ; asked me some com- 
monplace questions ; and made me a present of twenty 
guineas." 

" Spring " was dedicated to the Countess of Hertford, 
" whose practice it was to invite every summer some poet 
into the country, to hear her verses and assist her studies. 
This honor was one summer conferred on Thomson, who 



2i6 English Literature. 

took more delight in carousing with Lord Hertford and 
his friends than assisting her ladyship's poetical opera- 
tions, and therefore never received another summons." 
He afterwards travelled on the Continent with a pupil ; on 
his return, he was given the place of secretary of the briefs, 
and composed an unreadable poem on " Liberty ;" but his 
patron soon died. However, he was given a small pension, 
£100, and managed to be put into another office.'*' 

Less successful was Johnson's friend, Mr. Boyse, who 
lay in bed because his clothes were in pawn.f Johnson 
collected enough, by separate sixpences, to get them out, 
and in two days they were back. Once he was nearly starv- 
ing, and " some money was produced to purchase him a 
dinner, he got a bit of roast beef, but could not eat it with- 
out catchup, and laid out the last half-guinea he possessed 
in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed, too, for 
want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in." 

The refining influence of letters may be gathered from 
this anecdote : " Another man . . . made as wild use of 
his friend's beneficence, . . . spending in punch the soli- 
tary guinea which had been brought him one morning ; 
when resolving to add another claimant to a share of the 
bowl, besides a woman who always lived with him, and a 
footman who used to carry out petitions for charity, he 
borrowed a chairman's watch, and pawning it for half-a- 
crown, paid a clergyman to marry him to a fellow-lodger 
in the wretched house they all inhabited, and got so drunk 
over the guinea bowl of punch the evening of his wedding- 
day, that having many years lost the use of one leg, he 
now contrived to fall from the top of the stairs to the 

* This was when the Prince of Wales was in the opposition, and with a 
small pu-rse made an attempt to collect adherents among hterary men. 
Mallet also got a pension. 

\ Vide Life in Anderson's " Poets," x. 329. 



English Literature. 217 

bottom, and break his arm." In tliis condition Johnson 
brought him relief. 

Johnson, too, had himself known what w^ere the diffi- 
culties in the way of the young author, for he and Savage 
were sometimes so poor that they could not pay for a 
lodging, and had wandered together whole nights in the 
streets. One night in particular, he and Savage strolled 
about inveighing against the minister, and resolved they 
would stand by their country. 

As these are well-attested historical facts, we can un- 
derstand the allusions in the novelists to the wretchedness 
of authors. 

In "Humphrey Clinker," Smollett gives an account of 
a collection of authors, who met on Sunday, the only day 
they were safe from arrest, at the house of on'e S., who wel- 
comed them to his table. They were men who had trans- 
lated, collated, and compiled for more reputable authors, 
and had now set up for themselves. The most learned 
had been expelled the university for atheism, had prepared 
an orthodox confutation of Lord Bolingbroke, but had 
been meanwhile presented to the grand jury as a public 
nuisance for blaspheming in an alehouse on the Lord's 
day. A Scotchman was there who gave lectures on the 
pronunciation of the English language. There was a 
Piedmontese who wrote a humorous satire on the " Bal- 
ance of the English Poets," A sage who labored under 
the aypo(})o(3ia had written on agriculture, though he did 
not know hominy from rice.* Another Cockney, who 
had never left London, was engaged in writing his trav- 
els through Europe and a part of Asia, etc., etc. Field- 
ing, in his "Joseph Andrews" (lib. iii. chap, iii.), gives 
an account of the miseries of a poor author : " Many a 
morning have I waited in the cold parlours of men of 

* Vide "Notes and Queries," July 6, 1861, p. Y. 
10 



2i8 English Literature, 

quality ; when after seeing the lowest rascals in lace and 
embroidery . . . admitted, I have been sometimes told, 
on sending in my name, that my lord could not possibly 
see me this morning. . . . The profits which booksellers 
allowed authors for the best work was so very small, that 
certain men of birth and fortune some years ago, who 
were the patrons of wit and learning, thought fit to en- 
courage them further by entering into voluntary subscrip- 
tions for their encouragement. Thus Prior, Rowe, Pope, 
and some other men of genius received large sums for 
their labours from the public. This seemed so easy a 
method of getting money, that many of the lowest scrib- 
blers of the times ventured to publish their works in the 
same way ; and many had the assurance to take in sub- 
scriptions for what was , not writ and never intended." 
Mallet (whose name was changed by himself from Mal- 
loch) for a long time assumed to be writing a life of 
the Duke of MarlborOugh ; as a reward, the Duchess left 
him £1000, and he also had for the same reason a pension 
from the family, but he had not written a line. The pa- 
pers had before this been intrusted to Steele, who had 
pawned them. Boswell quotes Dr. Johnson's mention of 
a man named Cooke,* who translated Hesiod, and lived 
twenty years on a translation of Plautus, for which he 
was always taking subscriptions. 

Fielding's Wilson took to translating, but " contracted 
a distemper by my sedentary life, in which no part of my 
body was exercised but my right arm, which rendered 
me incapable of writing for a long time." Smollett men- 
tions an author who, on the pretext of meaning to make a 
short journey, borrowed a horse, which he at once sold, 

* It was this Cooke who introduced Foote to a club in these words : 
" This is the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for 
murdering his brother." 



English Literature. 219 

and, in addition, stole his publisher's boots. As for Sav- 
age, it is told of Lord Tyrconnel, when Savage was living 
with him, that, " having given him a collection of valu- 
able books, stamped with his own arms, he had the mor- 
tification to see them in a short time exposed to sale 
upon the stalls, it being usual with Mr. Savage, when he 
wanted a small sum, to take his books to the pawnbroker." 
He was continually getting subscribers for new editions 
of his writings, which were never printed. The transla- 
tors were the lowest of all, as Fielding implies. One, who 
undertook a translation of Lucretius, wrote out a new ver- 
sion of the first page, and then copied all the rest from a 
published work. 

How different all this crapulous misery is from the con- 
dition of things in the beginning of the century is very 
clear. Then a writer held a high social position, and 
afterwards he sank low, until, in the course of time, he 
managed to get into relations directly with the public. 
We shall see later how this happened. 

That literature should have been looked upon as a dis- 
graceful profession is not, under the circumstances, sur- 
prising. Even in the older times, Congreve had affected 
to despise his literary success. Voltaire, who was anxious 
to see everything and every one, made him a visit, and 
spoke about the Englishman's plays, but Congreve treated 
them as trifles, and asked his visitor not to speak of them. 
" Sir," said Yoltaire, " if you had the misfortune of being 
nothing but a gentleman, I should never have come to see 
you." But now literature was despised for very different 
and more respectable reasons. Society could hardly be 
expected to smile on Savage, for instance, who, " if he was 
entertained by a family, nothing was any longer to be re- 
garded there but amusement and jollity." "He was an 
incommodious inmate; for, being accustomed to an irregu- 



220 English Literature. 

lar life, he could not confine himself to finy stated hours, 
or pay any regard to the rules of a family, but could pro- 
long his conversation till midnight, without considering 
that business might require his friend's application in the 
morning ; and when he had persuaded himself to retire to 
bed, was not, without equal difficulty, called up to dinner : 
it was therefore impossible to pay him any distinction 
without the entire subversion of all economy, a kind of 
establishment which, wherever he went, he always ap- 
peared ambitious to overthrow." This is, of course, an 
exceptional case, such as might happen nowadays, and 
does happen every night of the week, Horace Walpole 
was very unwilling to be looked on as a man of letters. 
As Macaulay said, " he did not like to have anything in 
common with the wretches Avho lodged in the little courts 
behind St. Martin's Church, and stole out on Sunday to 
dine with their bookseller." When Mann congratulated 
him on the learning shown in his " Catalogue of Royal 
and Noble Authors," Walpole wrote : ''I know nothing. 
How should I ? I who have always lived in the big busy 
world ; who lie abed all the morning, calling it morning 
as long as you please ; who sup in company ; who have 
played at faro half my life, and now at loo till two or 
three in the morning ; who have always loved pleasure ; 
haunted auctions. . . . How I have laughed when some 
of the magazines have called me the learned gentleman. 
Pray don't be like the magazines." But Horace Wal- 
pole was a very genteel person, who did not represent the 
whole view of society. His letters are full of contemptu- 
ous references to most of the writers of his time, viz. : " I 
had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than 
' Leonidas ' or the ' Seasons.' " " The third and fourth 
volumes of ' Tristram Shandy ' are the dregs of nonsense, 
and have universally met the contempt they deserve." In 



English Literature. 221 

short, lie was an industrious dilettante who should be liv- 
ing now in the present age of sestheticism. 

The relations of Pope to the public need to be studied 
carefully, for while, when he began to write, government 
encouragement of literature was at its height, he outlived 
that, and saw most of the contemporaries of his later years 
in the misery I have described. The fact that he be- 
longed to the Church of Rome stood in the way of his 
holding a position under government. The laws against 
Papists were very severe at that time. Thus (" Lecky," 
i. 298, etc.) : ^' An act was passed in 1699, by which any 
Catholic priest convicted of celebrating mass, or discharg- 
ing any sacerdotal function (except in the house of an 
ambassador), was made liable to perpetual imprisonment," * 
and a reward of £1000 was offered for conviction. The 
same punishment was to be inflicted on any Papist who 
kept school or undertook the education of the young. No 
parent could send a child abroad to be educated in the 
Catholic faith, under a penalty of £100, which went to the 
informer. "All persons who did not, within six months 
of attaining the age of eighteen, take the Oath, not only 
of Allegiance, but also of Supremacy, and subscribe the 
declaration against transubstantiation, became incapable 
of either inheriting or purchasing land, and the property 
they would otherwise have inherited passed to the next 
Protestant heir." All persons in any civil or military 
office, all members of colleges, teachers, preachers, law- 
yers of every grade, were compelled to take the Oath 
of Supremacy, which was distinctly anti-Catholic, as well 
as the Oath of Allegiance and the declaration against 
the Stuarts. At any time the oath could be required of 
any Catholic who was suspected of disaffection. Who- 
ever refused was debarred from appearing at court, or 
* Lecky's " History of the Eighteenth Century," i, 298 et seq. 



222 English Literature. 

even coming within ten miles of London, from holding 
any office or employment, from keeping arms in his house, 
from travelling more than five miles from home without 
special license, and from bringing any action at law or 
suit in equity, under pain of forfeiting all his goods. 

In the English provinces, Virginia proscribed Puritans 
and Catholics ; Massachusetts proscribed and persecuted 
Episcopalians and Quakers ; but the Quaker provinces and 
Rhode Island established complete religious freedom, and 
in 1632 Maryland, founded by the Catholic Lord Balti- 
more, established this precedent of toleration, limited, 
however, to believers in the Trinity. The Protestants, 
however, got the upper hand, and in 1704 " enslaved" the 
Catholics. 

While the laws in England were thus rigorous, they 
were seldom put into eifect ; the Catholics in fact enjoyed 
toleration, and possibly, as Lecky suggests, the fact that a 
Roman Catholic was at the head of English literature may 
have tended towards encouraging milder views. Yet there 
was the danger that the laws might be turned against Pope 
at any moment. 

As he said (" Imitation of Horace," lib. ii. ep. ii.) : 

" Bred up at home, full early I begun 
To read in Greek the wrath of Peleus' son. 
Besides, m}' father taught me, from a lad, 
The better art to know the good from bad : 
(And little sure imported * to remove, 
To hunt for truth in Maudlin^s learned grove.) 
But knottier points, we knew not half so well, 
Deprived us soon of our paternal cell ; 
And certain laws, by sufferers thought unjust, 
Denied all posts of profit or of trust : 
Hopes after hopes of pious Papists failed 



* Peu importait, cf. Dryden (" Marriage a la Mode," iii. 1) : " It 
to practise what I shall say to my servant when I meet him." 



EnglisJi Literature. 223 

While mighty Williams's tliundei'ing arm prevailed. 
For right hereditary taxed and fined, 
He stuck to poverty with peace of mind ; 
And me the Muses helped to undergo it ; 
Convict a papist he, and I a poet." * 

Yet Pope was essentially a man of letters and not a 
politician. Harley, in 1714, offered him a place under 
government if he would consent to change his religion ; 
yet, although he was by no means a fervent Catholic, he 
declined this proposal, one reason being that he was un- 
willing to pain his parents. Halifax, possibly with a view 
to being sung by Pope, proposed a pension, but this was 
declined, as Avas a similar offer from Craggs of one of £300 
a year out of the secret funds. 

Certainly these things should be remembered to Pope's 
credit, especially at the present time, when, besides being 
out of favor as a poet, his moral character has been 
riddled by the discoveries of those who have made a 
searching examination of his life, writings, and papers. 
He has been found guilty of the most complicated lying 
that can be imagined, and he stands in contrast not with 
living men — many of whom are not wholly free from this 
vice, which is encouraged by the fact that it makes no 
difference how often a man is discovered in falsehood, he 
is eagerly believed the next time he perjures himself — 
but with the faultless beings whom we find in biogra- 
phies. 

As soon as 'Pope began to write he got into communi- 
cation with Tonson, the publisher of Dryden's " Virgil," 
and it was in a volume of Tonson's miscellanies that 
Pope's pastorals appeared in 1709. There was this advan- 
tage for Pope, that Tonson no longer enjoyed a monopoly; 
he had a formidable rival in Lintot. These two men 

* As if these were equal faults in the eyes of the government. 



224 Enylish Literature. 

pushed each other hard. Tonson published Shakspere's 
plays, Lintot brought out his poems. Lintot announced 
Pope's translation of the " Iliad," Tonson offered the 
" First Book," translated by Tickell. They both wrote 
to Young to secure his work, and in answering their let- 
ters he misdirected them, so that the one to Tonson fell 
into Lintot's hands, and vice versa. The matter was com- 
plicated by the fact that the one sent to Lintot, but 
written for Tonson, began : "That Bernard Lintot is so 
great a scoundrel, that," etc. 

Pope's " Pastorals " * have scarcely sufficient literary 

* Pope was recommended to write the fourth pastoral by William 
Walsh, a famous critic of the time (IGBS-lTOS). He it was who urged 
Pope to try to be a correct poet. He had been recommended to the pub- 
lic by Dryden, wdio said he was the best critic in the nation ; and Pope 
wrote of him : 

" To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known, 

And every author's merit but his own ; 

Such late was Walsh — the Muses' judge and friend, 

Who justly knew to blame or to commend ; 

To failings mild, but zealous to desert, 

The clearest head and the sincerest heart." 

Walsh is one of the few men wdio wrote sonnets in English between 
Milton and the Wartons (about 1750): 

" What has this bugbear Death that's worth our care ? 

After a life of pain and sorrow past, 
After deluding hopes and dire despair. 

Death only gives us quiet at the last ; 

How strangely are our love and hate misplaced ! 
Freedom we seek and yet from freedom flee. 

Courting those tyrant sins that chain us fast ; 
And shunning death that only sets us free. 
'Tis not a foolish fear of future pains, — 
Why should they fear who keep their souls from stains? 

That makes me dread thy terrors, Death, to see; 
'Tis i:ot the loss of riches or of fame, 



English Literature. 225 

merit to detain us long. Lines like these cannot move us 

now : 

" Hear how the birds, on every blooming spray, 
With joyous music wake the dawning day ! 
Why sit we mute, when early hnnets sing, 
When warbhng Philomel salutes the spring? 
Why sit we sad when Phosphor shines so clear, 
And lavish nature paints the purple year ?" 

Or these : 

" All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers, 
Hush'd are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers ; 
If DeHa smile, the flowers begin to spring. 
The skies to brighten, and the birds to sing." 

It is sufficiently clear that these lines-— and they are fairly 
representative of the whole — are but a faded transcript 
of some old pattern. They show the smooth copying of 
some other original rather than genuine love of the coun- 
try or real passion : 

" For her the flocks refuse their verdant food. 
The thirsty heifers shun the gliding flood, 
The silver swans her hapless fate bemoan 
In notes more sad than when they sing their own ; 
In hollow caves sweet echo silent lies 
Silent, or only to her name replies." 

All this is as truly sham sentiment as it is faulty nat- 
ural history. It is part of the pastoral poetry of which 
mention was made above. It had its origin in the re- 
action of modern life against the Middle Ages, in the 
negation of chivalry, mysticism, and asceticism which 
distinguished the Renaissance,* and the struggle of the 

Or the vain toys the vnlgar pleasures name, 
'Tis nothing, Celia, but the losing thee !" 
It is the last line, with its smirk and bow to Celia, that betrays the date of 
composition. 

* Vide Symond's " Renaissance in Italy," v. 245. 

10* 



226 English Literature, 

southern races, with their love of clearness, against the 
murky emotions of northern Europe. In Italy, as we 
have seen, the movement, after bearing fruit in a number 
of poems in Latin and Italian, and flowering in the pas- 
toral dramas of " Aminta" and the "Pastor Fido," faded 
away into the Arcadias of the last century, and the Italian 
opera. From Italy, as we saw, they passed through the 
rest of Europe ; even Cervantes wrote a pastoral novel, 
the " Galathea," and the pastoral existed for a long time as 
the legitimate expression, artificial as it seems to us, of the 
love of nature. Real nature they could not endure, this 
artificial copying of it was looked upon as an admirable 
form of literature. In English literature, we find the earli- 
est traces of it in Sidney and Spenser. Spenser's " Shep- 
herd's Calendar" (1579) (the name was applied commonly 
to a sort of almanac, with recipes and astrological notes 
suited to rustics) consists of twelve eclogues.* " ^glogai, 
as it were alywv or alyovoijojv Xoyoi, that is ' Goatherd's 
Tales,' " is Edward Kirke's explanation of their name. 
Spenser really said something in this way ; he pretended 
to be a shepherd, calling himself Colin Clout ; f Hobbinoll 
being Gabriel Harvey ; Cuddie, possibly Edward Kirke. 
These were real names ; Hobbinoll, for instance, in a note, 
is called " common and usuall." The poems, one for each 
month, beginning with January, are on different subjects. 
Some are simply love-poems ; three or four others are 
translations from Marot or imitations of Theocritus, Bion, 
or Vergil. Two contain well-told fables — the " Oak and 
the Briar," and that of the " Fox and the Kid," which ex- 
presses the dissatisfaction of the populace with the clergy, 

* " This being, who seeth not the grossness of such as by colour of 
learning would make us believe, that they are more rightly tearmed Ec- 
logai, as they would say, extraordinarie discourses of unnecessary matter." 

f From Skelton and Clement Marot. 



English Literature. 227 

and the suspicions felt concerning Romish intrigues ; and 
then there is, of course, a poem in honor of the fair Eliza. 
Two *' are burlesque imitations of rustic dialect and ban- 
ter." * One is a funeral tribute to a great lady ; another 
is a complaint of the way in which poets were neglected 
by the great. Three of them abuse the misconduct of the 
clergy and denounce Rome. This brief description will 
suffice to show that Spenser's treatment of the pastoral 
had at least this advantage, that it was used to convey 
something to the reader besides ingenious rhapsodies. 
After his time, we see it as a conventional form used 
by many poets, as in Milton's "Lycidas," Congreve's 
poem on the death of Queen Mary, and even Shelley's 
"Adonais," and Mr. Arnold's "Thyrsis." As Dr. John- 
son said ( " Life of Ambrose Philips " ), ''there had never, 
from the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occa- 
sionally of Arcadia and Strephon." Yet this is not a pre- 
cise statement. Later writers used some of the pastoral 
machinery, to be sure, and Arcadia became as truly part 
of the classical territory as the region of that name was 
part of classical geography, and Strephon and Doris were 
its inhabitants ; but the pastoral, as sung by alleged shep- 
herds, did not exist without interruption, and it was ridi- 
culed by certain poets. Marlowe wrote " The Shepherd 
to his Love," " Come Live with Me and Be my Love," f 
in answer to which Raleigh (?) wrote (" The Milk-maid's 
Mother's Answer ") the " Nymph's Reply:" 

" If that the world and love were young, 
And truth in every shepherd's tongue, 
These pretty pleasures might me move 
To live with thee and be thy love." 

* Church's " Spenser," English Men of Letters Series. 

f Reprinted in the "Compleat Angler," 1653, and so made popular. 



228 iLnylish Literature. 

Each stanza of the answer ridiculed the corresponding 
one of the original. Marlowe's poem w^as printed in the 
"Passionate Pilgrim" (1549) — i. e,, stanzas 1, 2, 3, and 5. 
This bore only Shakspere's name on it at first, but, in 1600, 
Marlowe's. It was very popular, and was imitated by 
Donne ("The Bait"), and by Herrick ("To Phillis : to 
Love and Live with Him").* 

Among the miscellaneous poems of the di'amatist Robert 
Greene (1550-92) we find a burlesque, called " Doron's 
Eclogue, joined with Carmela's." 

" Doron. Sit down, Carmela ; here are cobs for kings, 
Sloes black as Jet or like my Christmas shoes, 
Sweet cider, which my leathern bottle brings ; 
Sit down, Carmela, let me kiss thy toes. 

*' Carmela. Ah Doron! ah my heart! thou art as white 
As is my mother's calf or brinded cow ; 
Thine eyes are like the glow-worm in the night ; 
Thine hairs resemble thickest of the snow. 

"The lines within thy face are deep and clear 
Like to the furrows of my father's wain," etc. 

Yet this, to our ears, is scarcely more absurd than Pope's 

* Donne's ran thus : 

" Come live with me and be my love, 
And we will some new pleasuj-es prove 
Of golden sands and crystal brooks, 
With silken lines and silver hooks. 

" There will the river whispering run 

Warm'd by thine eyes more than the sun ; 

And there the enamoured fish will stay 

Begging themselves they may betray," etc, 
Herrick' s thus : 

" Live, live with me and thou shalt see 

The pleasures I'll prepare for thee ; 

What sweets the country can afford 

Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board." 



English Literature. 229 

rehandling of the pastoral. By a singular coincidence, 
Ambrose Philips also composed pastorals ; he it was who 
became immortalized in the words namhy-pamby, for such 

. lines as this: 

" Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling." * 

* " To Miss Margaret Pulteney, Daughter of Charles Pulteney, esq. 
April 27,172'?: 

" Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling, 
All caressing, none beguiling, 
Bud of beauty, fairly blowing," etc. 

In the Golden Treasury^ No. cxii. p. Ill, is his poem "To Charlotte Pul- 
teney," May 1,1724: 

" Timely blossom, infant fair, 

Fondling of a happy pair, 

Every morn and every night 

Their solicitous delight," etc. 
It is rather pretty. 

Compare Ambrose Philips's poems to the Pulteney children with Marot's 
" Pour la Petite Princesse de Navarre, k Mme. Marguerite :" 
" Voyant que la Royne, ma mere, 

Trouve a present, la rynie amere, 

Ma dame, m'est prins fantasie 

De vous monstrer qu'en poesie 

Sa fille suis. Arriere prose, 

Puis que renier maintenaut j'ose. 

" Pour commencer done k renier : 
Vous pouvez, ma dame, estimer 
Quel joye k la fille advenoit, 
Sachant que la mere venoit," etc. 

D'Hericault's ed., p. 85. ' 
And with Ronsard, " Gayete," No. vii. (ed, Blanchemain, vi. 396) : 
" Enfant de quatre ans, combien 
Ta politesse a de bien ! 
Combien en a ton enfance 
Si elle avoit cognoissance 
De I'heur que je dois avoir 
Et qu'elle a sans le scavoir," etc. 
Lamb says ("Works," iii. 178): "To the measure in which these lines 



230 English Literature. 

It was applied to him by Henry Carey * (author of " Sally 
in Our Alley," and " Chrononhotonthologos "). That two 
men should at the same time try their hand at this species 

are written the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the 
name of Namby Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in 
some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very de- 
liciously ; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may 
show that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest move- 
ments of passion. So true it is, which Drayton seems to have f^lt, that it 
is the poet who modifies the metre, not the metre the poet." These are 
the lines " To Signora Cuzzoni " to which Lamb refers : 

" Little syren of the stage, 
Charmer of an idle age ; 
Empty warbler, breathing lyre, 
Wanton gale of fond desire, 
Bane of every manly art. 
Sweet enfeebler of the heart ! 
0, too pleasing in thy strain, 
Hence to southern climes again ; 
Tuneful mischief, vocal spell, 
To this island bid farewell ; 
Leave us as we ought to be. 
Leave the Britons rough and free." 

* Henry Carey : " He led a life free from reproach, and hanged himself 
Oct. 4, 1743." Li his poems (3d ed., 1729, p. 55) we find " Namby-Pamby ; 
or a Panegyric of the New Versification :" 

" All ye poets of the age ! 
All ye witlings of the stage, 
Learn your jingles to reform. 
Crop your numbers and conform : 
Let your little verses flow 
Gently, sweetly, row by row. 
Let the verse the subject tit. 
Little subject, little wit, 
Namby-Pamby is your guide 
Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride. 

* * * * 

Now the venal poet sings 



English Literature. 23 1 

of composition is, perhaps, a little strange, unless we re- 
member that it was, so to speak, awaiting the writers of 
the day. It gave pleasure, however, to readers ; for the 
Arcadia it described was, after all, a relief from the 
intellectual and didactic region towards which poetry 
was moving. As Steele said in the Guardian, IsTo. 22 : 
"It transports us into a kind of fairy -land, where our 
ears are soothed with the melody of birds, bleating flocks, 
and purling streams ; our eyes enchanted with flowery 
meadows and springing greens ; we are laid under cool 
shades, and entertained with all the sweets and freshness 
of nature. . . . The first reason is, because all men like 
ease. ... A second reason is our secret approbation of 
innocence and simplicity. . . . This is the reason why we 
are so much pleased with the prattle of children. ... A 

Baby clouts and baby things, 

Baby dolls and baby houses, 

Little misses, little spouses, 

Little playthings, little toys, 

Little girls, and little boys. 
* * * * 

Now methinks I hear him say 
Boys and girls come out to play," etc. 
As to " Sally in Our Alley," Carey, in the 3d edition of his poems, p. 127, 
prefaces the poem with the remark that he meant " to set forth the beauty 
of a chaste and disinterested passion even in the lowest class of humanity." 
He noticed a young shoemaker's prentice making holiday with his sweet- 
heart, showing her Bedlam, puppet-shows, and flying-chairs, and all the 
elegance of Moorfields. He gave her a collation of buns, cheese-cakes, 
gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale. The author followed 
them through the crowd, and afterwards wrote his poem, but " being 
young and obscure, was very much ridiculed by some of his acquaintance 
for this performance ; which nevertheless made its way into the polite 
world and amply recompensed him by the applause of the divine Addison 
who was pleased more than once to mention it with approbation," This 
is but one of many incidental proofs of Addison's sound taste and kind- 
heartedness. 



232 English Literature, 

third r3ason is our love of the country." These remarks 
surprise us; Pope's and Philips's pastorals seem to us more 
artificial than a brick house ; yet, for three hundred years 
poems as vague as these gave our ancestors the feeling of 
being out-doors. To our thinking, they are as much like 
nature as the smoke of pastilles is like fresh air. 

Philips's pastorals were praised by Addison in the 
K^pectator (No. 523) : "He has given a new life and a 
more natural beauty to this way of writing by substitut- 
ing in the place of these Antiquated Fables, the supersti- 
tious Mythology which prevails among the Shepherds of 
our own Country." This praise galled Pope. Among 
other things he had given his doll-like shepherds classical 
names, pluming himself on his resemblance to Vergil, 
while Philips imitated Spenser, so far as preserving such 
names as Hobbinoll, Colinet, etc., may imply imitation. 
Pope's method of redeeming himself was characteris- 
tically ingenious. He sent, anonymously, to Steele a 
paper for the Guardian (No. 40), in which he gave ironi- 
cal praise to Philips for all that was poorest in his pas- 
torals, and found pretended fault with himself, and did all 
this so slyly that it was only after it was printed that his 
real design became evident. Steele, before printing, showed 
the paper to Pope, who assented to its publication. Ad- 
dison is reported to have been annoyed by this inci- 
dent, and it does not seem surprising. He had praised 
Philips's " Distressed Mother," the play which so moved 
Sir Roger, and he had always spoken well of Philips's 
work ; possibly, too, the fact that this writer did try to 
preserve a faint ray of what is called local color may 
have attracted him.* However this may be, further com- 

* Pope is also suspected, though on no good evidence, of having insti- 
gated Gay to write his mock pastorals, " The Shepherd's Week," in parody 
of Philips, It seems quite as likely that Gay wrote this for his own 



English Literature, 233 

plications arose between him and Pope. Dennis, it will 
be remembered, had made an onslaught on Addison's 
" Cato." Pope took upon himself the task of crushing 

amusement, for he was by no means a solemn person. Swift, who cared 
but little for conventional poetry, once said to him that a Newgate pas- 
toral — i. e., something in the form of a pastoral with the grim truth of life 
as shown by criminals — would be an amusing thing, and Gay wrote the 
"Beggar's Opera." The " Shepherd's Week," although meant for a cari- 
cature, was taken to be a serious picture from real life. So, too, tlic 
Guardian, No. 40, which was written by Pope, was for a long time sup- 
posed not to be ironical. Hannah More {vide Elwyn's " Pope," i. 254) 
detected the imposition, but she said almost every one else differed from 
her. Of course, those directly concerned had seen through Pope's de- 
vice long before, but they were not anxious to spread the fact abroad. 
Philips himself hung up a stick at Buttons's to whip his brother-Arcadian 
with, as he said, in case they should ever meet there. 

It is curious to notice that the Italian pastoral poets were turned to ridi- 
cule in the same way by the writers of burlesque, Berni, Folengo, and 
Romolo Bertini. 

To return to Gay's pastorals, Gay said of them : " Thou wilt not find my 
shepherdesses idly piping upon oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up 
the sheaves, or, if the hogs are astray, driving them to their styes. My 
shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our 
own fields ; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge ; nor 
doLh he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none." 

Here is an example of his burlesque : 

" If by the dairy's hatch I chance to hie, 
I shall her goodly countenance espy. 
For there her goodly countenance I've seen, 
Set off with kerchief starched and pinners clean. 
Sometimes, like wax, she rolls the butter round, 
Or with the wooden lily prints the pound. 

•Js" 'Jt ^ ^ "Sfr 

But now, alas ! these ears shall hear no more 
The whining swine surround the dairy door; 
No more her can shall fill the hollow tray 
To fat the guzzling hogs Avith floods of whey. 
Lament, ye swine ! in grunting spend your grief, 
For you, like me, have lost your sole relief. 



234 English Literature. 

Dennis, and wrote a foul-mouthed pamphlet of personal 
abuse of the poor old critic, whom he represented as 
raving in a garret over the failure of his attack on the 
*' Cato." The criticisms themselves were not answered at 
all. Addison got Steele to write a note to Lintot disavow- 
ing all connection with this, and saying that, if he took 
notice of Mr. Dennis's criticisms, it should be in such a 
way as to give Mr. Dennis no cause of complaint. He 
added that he had refused to look at the pamphlet when 
it was offered to him, and that he had expressed his dis- 
approval of this mode of attack. It is not made clear that 
he knew that Pope had written the attack, but Pope took 
umbrage at the implied reproof, and thus was laid the 
foundation of a famous literary quarrel.* 

II. Although Addison agreed with posterity in being 
indifferent to Pope's pastorals, and differed from it in 
j^raising Philips's, he warmly commended Pope's " Essay 
on Criticism" in the Spectator (No. 253, Dec. 20, 1711). 
Praise from Addison was something to be grateful for. 
He stood at the head of English men of letters at this 
time, and his position and his age — he was fifty years old, 
while Pope was twenty-four — authorized him to warn 
Pope against denunciations of his fellow-writers. To be 
sure, those whom Pope had attacked were men whom the 
world has agreed to forget or to remember with contempt, 
such as Dennis, Sir Richard Blackmore, and Luke Mil- 
bourne, but it would have been better for Pope's name if 
he had shown some of Addison's forbearance. After this 
slight reproof, Addison had nothing but commendation. 

After the good man warned us from his text, 
That none could tell whose turn it would be next, 
He said that heaven would take her soul, no doubt, 
And spoke the hour-glass in her praise — quite out." 

* Vide Mr. Leslie Stephen's " Pope," English Men of Letters Series, p. 63. 



English Literature, 235 

He said, after speaking of the friendships between literary 
men in ancient times : "In our own country a man seldom 
sets up for a poet, without attacking the reputation of all 
his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, 
the Scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the 
topics of detraction with which he makes his entrance 
into the world. ... I am sorry to find that an author, 
who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has 
admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine 
poem : I mean ' The Art of Criticism,' which was pub- 
lished some months since, and is a masterpiece in its 
kind." 

Pope wrote a letter thanking Addison for his kind 
notice, saying : " Though it be the highest satisfaction 
to find myself commended by a writer whom all the world 
commends, yet I am not more obliged to you for that than 
for your candour and frankness in acquainting me with the 
error I have been guilty of in speaking too freely of my 
brother moderns." 

Addison says : " The observations follow one another 
like those in Horace's ' Art of Poetry.' . . . They are 
some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must 
assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance 
and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those 
which are the most known, and the most received, they are 
placed in so beautiful a light and illustrated with such apt 
allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, 
and make the reader, who was before acquainted with 
them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity." 
He gives, too, many examples of Pope's excellence, ending 
with these words: " I cannot conclude this paper without 
taking notice that we have three poems in our tongue, 
which are of the same nature, and each of them a master- 
piece in its kind ; the ' Essay on Translated Verse,' the 



236 Kngllsli Literature. 

* Essay on the Art of Poetry,' and the ' Essay on Criti- 
cism.' " The comparison with those two other books is like- 
ly to be less understood as a compliment at present than 
it was at the time when it was written. The " Essay on 
Criticism " is still a classic, while the others are seldom 
read. The " Essay on Translated Verse " was written by 
Lord Roscommon (1633-84), and published the year of 
his death. It is best known to posterity by two lines, for 
which Pope gets all the credit ; just as in our times all 
the good jokes, old and new, are ascribed to Lamb and 
Sidney Smith. The lines are these : 

" Immodest words admit of no defence ; 
Fur want of decency is want of sense." 

Other familiar lines of his are : 

" And choose an anthor as you would choose a friend." 
" The multitude is always in the wrong." 

The final couplet, too, of this passage is sometimes quoted: 

" But who did ever in French authors see 
The comprehensive English energy ? 
Tlie weighty bullion of one Sterling line, 
Drawn to French wire, would through whole pages shine." 

This was one of the hand-books of the literary move- 
ment of the time succeeding the Restoration, and it is in- 
teresting to examine the faults he condemns, such as these: 

" Absurd expi'essions, crude, abortive thoughts, 
All the lewd legion of exploded faults." 

Yet Roscommon ventured to denounce the couplet, for 

he said : 

" Of many faults, rhyme is pei-haps the cause; 
Too strict to rhyme, we sliglit more useful laws, 
For that in Greece or Rome was never known, 
Till by barbarian deluges o'erflown ;" etc. 
* 4e # * * 



English Literature. 237 

" But now that Phoebus and the Sacred Nine, 
With all their beams on our bless'd Island shine, 
Why should not we their ancient rites restore. 
And be what Rome or Athens were before ?" 

And here he inserts twenty-seven lines of his own, writ- 
ten in the Miltonic manner,* and ends with the wish : 

" may I live to hail the glorious day, 
And sing loud pseans through the crowded way, 
When in triumphant state the British Mnse, 
True to herself, shall barbarous aid refuse, 
And in the Roman majesty appear. 
Which none know better, and none come so near." 

Roscommon also translated Horace's "Ars Poetica" 
into blank verse. 

The other piece which Addison mentions was by John 
Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), who, 
when he was Earl of Mulgrave, wrote the "Essay on Sat- 
ire," a part of which Rochester suspected to have' been 
written by Dry den, and accordingly had him beaten by 
hired ruffians. Sheffield also made over Shakspere's " Ju- 
lius Csesar " according to the unities. His " Essay on 
Poetry," 1682, begins thus : 

* " Have we forgot how Raphael's numerous prose 
Led our exalted souls through heavenly camps, 
And marked the ground where proud apostate thrones 
Defied Jehovah ! Here, 'twixt host and host, 
(A narrow but a dreadful interval) 
Portentous Sight ! before the cloudy van 
Satan with vast and haughty strides advanced, 
Game towering armed in adamant and gold." Etc. 

This is probably the first imitation of Milton extant. Roscommon died in 
1684, in which year this essay was published. His own blank verse in the 
translation of the " Ars Poetica " is most crabbed. 

Samuel Say (" Poems," London, 1'745) has an imitation of Milton dated 
1698. 



238 English Literature, 

" Of all those arts in which the wise excel, 
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well :" 

and he proceeds to give the rules for writing well. 

*' Here I shall all the various sorts of verse, 
And the whole art of poetry rehearse ; 
But who that task would after Horace do ? 
The best of masters, and examples, too ! 
Echoes at best, all we can say is vain," 

he adds, with truth. He goes on to mention, " first, then, 
of songs ;" " next, Elegy, of sweet, but solemn voice ;" " a 
happier flight, and of a happier force, are Odes, the Muses' 
most unruly horse ;" " satire ;" " the Stage." Of this last 
he says : 

*' The unities of action, time, and place, 
Which, if observed, give plays so great a grace, 
Are, though but little practised, too well known 
To be taught here, where we pretend alone 
From nicer faults to purge the present age, 
Less obvious errors of the English stage." 

This is a bad beginning, but what he has to say about 
the writing of plays is well worth a moment's attention, 
as when he says : 

" Who can choose but pity . 
A dying hero, miserably witty ? 
But, oh ! the dialogues, where jest and mock 
Is held up like a rest at shuttlecock ; 
Or else like bells, eternally they chime, 
They sigh in simile and die in rhyme." 

He says : 

"Shakspere and Fletcher are the wonders now; 
****** 
Their beauties imitate but not their faults, 
First, on a plot employ thy careful thoughts." 

He warns against perfect characters : 

" There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw 
A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw." 



English Literature. 239 

And finally, in speaking of the epic, he says : 

"Read Homer once, and you can read no more ; 
For all books else appear so mean, so poor, 
Yerse will seem prose ; but still persist to read, 
And Homer will be all the books you need." 

This brief recapitulation will make clearer the relation 
of Pope's poem, the " Essay on Criticism," to contempo- 
rary literature. It is sufficiently remarkable as the work 
of a young man of but twenty-two, but the merit lies in 
the execution, not, as we might think without examina- 
tion, in the conception. What lay nearest at hand was 
Boileau's poem, *'L'Art Poetique " (1674), which was 
translated as early as 1680, and published in 1683, with 
revisions by Dryden, with whose works it is commonly 
printed.* Naturally, at the time of the Renaissance, one 
of the most important questions had been how men should 
write, and, as we have seen, since it seemed as if the an- 
cients had alone known the answer, the moderns had gone 
back to those who had spoken with the most authority. 
We have seen the enormous influence of Aristotle ; Hor- 
ace, too, was scarcely less respected. His " Ars Poetica" 
held the position in regard to literature that Euclid has 
held in astronomy. It was in 1567 that Thomas Drant 
made the first English translation of that poem. About 
1603, Ben Jonson made another translation f in exceedingly 

* With English names, put in as illustrations, in place of the French 
ones employed by Boileau. 

Cf. Oldham's Horace, "His Art of Poetry," imitated in English (1684), 
" putting Horace into a more modern dress, than hitherto he has appeared 
in — that is, by making him speak as if he were living now. I therefore 
resolved to alter the scene from Rome to London, and make use of Eng- 
lish names of men, places, and customs, when the parallel would decently 
permit." 

f Vide " To the Readers of Sejanus," p. 137, where he says he shall 
speak of ancient drama " in my observations upon Horace, his Art of 



240 JEaglish Literature. 

rugged verse. The first of the moderns to write a ccda 
of laws for literature was Trissino,* the same man whose 
" Sof onisba " lent such additional gloom to European trag- 
edy. In France, there were many who taught the same 
lesson. Yet, it is to be noticed, the greatest writers of 
Italy and of England came before these new teachers 
of the way to write. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, like 
Chaucer, Spenser, and the great Elizabethan dramatists, 
owed nothing to the rigid rules which men like Tris- 
sino, Boileau, and Pope were to preach as a new gospel. 
Even in France, the first fruits of the Renaissance were, 
although of moderate literary value, of the same kind. 
Du Bellay, Belleau, and Ronsard were first deposed by 
Malherbe, and then thrown into the shade by the great 
French classic writers, and were neglected until about 
a century ago, when the chains were broken ; and since 
then these older writers have received the praise which 
is their due. The reason of this change becomes plain 
on consideration. The first effect of the revival of let- 
ters was purely stimulating ; and in the place of the 
meagre traditional lore, the scraps of antiquity which 
formed the whole supply of the Dark Ages, there were 
given them the magnificent literatures of the ancient 
world, and they turned w^ith fervor to their writing. In 
their enthusiasm, they did not break loose from the Mid- 
Poetry, which, with the text, I intend shortly to pubHsh." These observa- 
tions are lost. In his " Timber, or Discoveries Made upon Men and Mat- 
ters," he speaks of Aristotle as a great critic, and of the need of the unity 
of action in the drama, but says nothing of the other rules. They were 
unknown in .England at this time. They first came into England through 
Dryden's praise of Bossu and Rapin, 

Webbe, Puttenham, etc., make no mention of these rules, and they were 
continually groping for statements of this kind. 

Sidney, to be sure, had commended them in his "Defence of Poesy," 
but without effect. 



English Literature. 241 

die Ao-es. They took the material that lay ready to the 
hand. In Italy, Arlosto, for instance, did not scorn the 
romances of chivalry. Shakspere wrote about Hamlet or 
Macbeth as freely as about Julius Caesar ; it was only later 
that Otway found it necessary to alter the mediaeval " Ro- 
meo and Juliet " into a play of ancient Rome. The early 
pedantic attempts to translate Greek originals, such as the 
Italian version of the " (Edipus," * Dolce's " Jocasta," Gas- 
coigne's rendering of this same "Jocasta," and Jodelle's 
" Cleopatre " and " Didon," clearly implied breaking al- 
legiance to the native traditions, although there was no 
avowed hostility between the classic leaven and the abun- 
dant native material, such as arose later. When this first 
fervor died out, and people turned to books for directions 
about writing rather than for a sympathetic glow, the rules 
were deemed of the utmost importance, pedants got into 
power, and pseudo-classicism held full sway over the litera- 
ture and taste of modern Europe. This deliberate wooden 
imitation of classical models was then, so to speak, the sober 
second-thought of the Renaissance : the first was one of 
delight, and it inspired great works in Italy and England ; 
the other followed, correcting, pruning, revising, mistaking 
pallid faultlessness for perfection, but yet teaching cor- 
rectness and precision. All of this was, it must be remem- 
bered, for the Italians the resumption of an interrupted 
growth, a restoration of shattered continuity ; but else- 
where it was a foreign importation. In France, various cir- 
cumstances, especially the Hundred Years' War, broke the 
connection between the Middle Ages and modern times, 
and the greater literature of that country belongs to the 
classical period and its legitimate successors. In England 
and in Spain, this movement was less marked than in 

* By Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara, 
11 



242 English Literature. 

Italy, just as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon was 
marked only by an unusually high tide on the English 
coast. We thus see more clearly the coherence of the 
literatui"^ of different countries the more closely we ex- 
amine that of any one. They were, and are, all fellow- 
workers in the great task of clearing away the Middle 
Ages, a process not yet completed, for no new system has 
yet been announced which we are to obey. This has ad- 
vanced by three steps, the Renaissance, the Reformation, 
and Revolution.* The age of Pope was in literature a time 
of Reformation. We need not fear to think that we are 
living in one of Revolution, of which the outbreak of Ro- 
manticism was but a preliminary riot. Certainly the time 
is ripe for it ; the present unceasing imitation of every- 
thing that has found success before shows, by its being an 
artistic process, that the old methods are dead, and writ- 
ers cannot forever go on pretending that they are some- 
body else. Let us not be alarmed ; we need only to take 
courage from observing the groundlessness of the fears 
that agitated our ancestors when the school of Pope was 
overthrown. It seemed to them as if the world were re- 
lapsing into savagery, especially when it no longer was 
possible to bind up all truth in a book. There is a con- 
stant yearning of the human race to take a printed volume 
as the sole receptacle of truth about literature and art, and a 
constant discovery that this wish is unattainable. Yet here, 
as everywhere, other people's experience is worthless. 

As to Pope's version of the poetic art, it survives as the 
last and best of the many manuals, as Boileau's does in 
France. I have mentioned Pope's predecessors. Boileau 
had many more.f His own " Art Poetique " is now a most 

* Symoiids, "Renaissance in Italy," v. 530. 

f Eustace Deschamps (1338-1415), the " Jardin de Plaisance et les 
Fleurs de Rhetorique" (154'7), Pierre Fabri, Th. Sebilet (1548), Jacques 



English Literature. 243 

readable poem in the original. Although Boileau, when 
charged with writing merely an imitation of Horace, re- 
plied that this was scarcely a fair statement, inasmuch as 
but fifty or sixty lines out of eleven thousand could be 
called imitations, he was inexact, because the whole poem 
was really founded on Horace. It was an adaptation of 
the Roman poet's "Ars Poetica," Pope's "Essay on 
Criticism," as I have said, was of the same literary fam- 
ily. It has been very highly praised, and it has been at- 
tacked with equal ardor. Dr. Johnson called it one of 
Pope's greatest works ; Warton said it was a master- 
piece ; De Quincey found fault with it ; Hazlitt said it 
was a double-refined essence of wit and sense ; and El- 
wyn, his latest editor, attacks it most indiscreetly, putting 

Pelletier (1556), Vauquelin de la Fresnaie {cir. IS'FG, published 1605), 
Pierre de Laudriin d'Aigalliers, Ronsard, Mile, de Gournay, etc. ; vide 
Goujet, "Bibliotheque Fran9aise,".iii. 459. Vauquelin de la Fresnaie (the 
first French satirist) wrote in his "Art Poetique " ((Euvres, i. 90): 

*' Tu peux encore faire une sorte d'ouvrage, 
Qu'on pent nommer forest ou naturel bocage : 
Qu'on fait sur le cham, en plaisir, en fureur, 
Un vers qui de la Muse est un Avancoureur 
Et que pour un sujet ou court par la carriere, 
Sans bride gallopant sur la raesrae matiere, 
Pousse de la chaleur, qu'on suit a I'abandon, 
D'une grand' violence et d'un aspre randon. 

Stace fut le premier en la langue Romaine, 
Qui courut librenaent par cette large plaine. 
Comme dans les forests les arbres soustenus 
Sur les pieds naturel, sans art ainsi venus. 
Leur perruque jamais n'ayant este coupee, 
Sont quelquefois plus beau qu'une taille serpee. 
Aussi cette fa9on en beaute passera 
Souvent un autre vers qui plus lime sera." 

This quotation, however, does Yauquelin no justice; he was not often 
so wide of the mark. See his " Millies," liv. ii. 9, 12, and 24. 



244 Engluh Literature. 

on Pope all the blame which belongs to the age in which 
he lived. It is hard not to admire the poem as a work of 
art, however much we may differ in our views of the rules 
he inculcates. In execution, compare it with these lines 
from the translation of Boileau : 

"Whate'er you write of pleasant or sublime, 
Always let sense accompany your rhyme ; 
Falsely they seem each other to oppose ; 
Rhyme must be made with reason's laws to close : 
And when to conquer her you bend your force, 
The mind will triumph in the noble course, 
To reason's yoke she quickly will incline, 
Which, far from hurting, renders her divine : 
But if neglected will as easily stray, 
And master reason which she should obey. 
Love reason, then ; and let whate'er you write 
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light," etc. 

This is clumsy work by the side of the facile grace of 
the lines with which Pope's " Essay on Criticism " * opens : 

" 'Tis hard to say if greater want of skill 
Appear in writing or in judging ill ; 

* Of course the commentators have been over this poem ; they have 
proved that where Pope wrote 

" When first young Maro in his boundless mind 
A work t'outlast immortal Rome designed," 

" the word outlast is improper ; for Virgil, like a true Roman, never dreamt 
of the mortality of the city " (Wakefield). 
More amusing is this comment : 

" Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey, 
Nor time, nor moths, e'er spoiled as much as they." 

"This is a quibble. Time and moths spoil books by destroying them. 
The commentators only spoiled them by explaining them badly. The edi- 
tors were so far from spoiling books in the same sense as time, that by 
multiplying copies they assisted to preserve them" (Elwyn). With more 
justice they point out obscure and prosaic lines. 



English Literature. 245 

But of the two le«s dangerous is th' offence 
To tire our patience than mislead our sense,. 
Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; 
A fool might once alone himself expose, 
Now one in verse makes many more in prose. 

'Tis with our judgments, as our watches, none 
Go just alike, j'et each believes his own; 
In poets as true genius is but rare, 
True taste as seldom is the critic's share," ete. 

Tlie " Windsor Forest " (published in 1715) need not 
occupy our attention. Yet Wordsworth, in one of his 
prefaces, reprinted in the second volume of his prose 
works, where he assaulted the literature of the time we 
are now considering, said that, " excepting the ' JSToctur- 
nal Reverie ' * of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two 

* For Lady Winchelsea, vide Ward's "English Poets," iii. 27: 
" In such a night, when every louder wind 
Is to its distant cavern safe confined, 
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, 
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings. 
Or from some tree, framed for the owl's delight, 
She hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right, — ■ 
In such a night, when passing clouds give place, 
Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face, 
When in some river, overhung with green, 
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen, 
When freshened grass now bears itself upright, 
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite. 
Whence spring the woodbine and the bramble-rose, 
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows, 
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes. 
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes. 

Where scattered glow-worms, — but in twilight fine, 

Shew trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine, 
While Salisbury stands the test of every lio-ht 
In perfect charms and perfect beauty bright ; 



246 English Literature. 

in the ' Windsor Forest ' of Pope, the poetry of the period 
intervening between the publication of the ' Paradise 
Lost ' and the ' Seasons ' does not contain a single new 
image of external nature, and scarcely presents a familiar 
one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet 
has been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his 
feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of 
genuine imagination." It is not easy to decide what are the 

When odours, which decHned repelhng day, 

Through temperate air uninterrupted stray; 

When darkened gi'oves their softest shadows wear, 

And falling watei-s we distinctly hear; 

When through the gloom more venerable shows 

Some ancient fabric awful in repose ; 

While sunburned hills their swarthy looks conceal, 

And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale ; 

When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads, 

Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads. 

Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear, 

Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear ; 

When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food, 

And unmolested kine rechew the cud ; 

When curlews cry beneath the village walls, 

And to her straggling brood the partridge calls ; 

Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep, 

Which but endures, whilst tyrant man doth sleep ; 

When a sedate content the spirit feels, 

And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals ; 

But silent musings urge the mind to seek 

Something too high for syllables to speak ; 

Till the free soul to a composedness charmed. 

Finding the elements of rage disarmed. 

O'er all below a solemn quiet grown, 

Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own ; 

In such a night let me abroad remain. 

Till morning breaks and all's confused again ; 

Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed, 

Our pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued." 



English Literature. 247 

passages in the " Windsor Forest " that he meant. Gray, 
one might say, should be exckided from this condemna- 
tion. Parnell,* too, was, in his way, a new voice. 

* Parnell is the first of the school of Young and Blair ; vide his " Night- 
Piece on Death." 

Goldsmith, in his "Life of Parnell," civ. 1763, says: "It is indeed 
amazing, after what has been done by Dryden, Addison, and Pope, to im- 
prove and harmonize our native tongue, that their successors should have 
taken pains to involve it into pristine barbarity. These misguided inno- 
vators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, 
but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions, and 
the harsliest constructi£)ns, vainly imagining, that the more their writings 
are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry. They have adopted a 
language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those 
who do not understand them are silent, and those who make out their 
meaning are willing to praise, to show they understand. From these . , . 
affectations the poems of Parnell are entirely free." The " Night-Piece," 
he says, " deserves every praise ; and I should suppose, with very little 
amendment, might be made to surpass all those night-pieces and church- 
yard scenes that have since appeared." 

Yet, in the Elizabethan period, which, as a friend of mine suggests, held 
the various characteristic traits of later times in solution, we find ex- 
amples of this quality, as in Fletcher's 

" Hence, all you vain delights, 
As short as are the nights 

Wherein you spend your folly! 
There's nought in this life sweet, 
If man were wise to see 't, 

But only melancholy, 

Oh, sweetest melancholy ! 
Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes, 
A sight that piercing mortifies ! 
A look that's fastened to the ground, 
A tongue chain'd up without a sound ! 
Fountain heads, and pathless groves, 
Places which pale passion loves ! 
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls ! 



248 English Literature. 

The "Rape of the Lock" (1712, and enlarged, 1V14) 
has been praised very highly, and is generally much ad- 
, mired. De Quincey calls it " the most exquisite monument 
of playful fancy that universal literature offers." Hazlitt: 
it "is the most exquisite filigree work ever invented. 
... It is the perfection of the mock heroic ;" and many 
echoing forms of this commendation may be accumulated 
by the curious. Yet, it would seem as if it was only when 
the heroic is admired that the mock-heroic can be fully 
appreciated, and if one goes the other must go with it. 
However this may be, I may as well own frankly that I 
am unable to admire the poem. It is," of course, clever, 
but I fail to get such delight from its lines as has reward- 
ed the eminent men who have written about it. It is im- 
possible to avoid the thought that patriotism is in part 
the cause of this admiration. Warton says (" Elwyn," ii. 
116) : "If some of the most candid among the French 
critics begin to acknowledge that they have produced 
nothing in point of sublimity and majesty equal to the 
' Paradise Lost,' we may also venture to affirm that in 
point of delicacy, elegance, and fine - turned raillery, on 
which they have so much valued themselves, they have 
produced nothing equal to the ' Rape of the Lock.' " The 
French speak with equal enthusiasm of Boileau's " Le 
Lutrin" (1674), and every new Italian editor of Tassoni's 
"La Secchia Rapita " (1624) proceeds at once to demol- 
ishing Boileau's pretensions.* The Italian poem is long, 

A midnight bell, a parting groan ! 

These are the sounds we feed upon; 

Then stretch your bones in a still gloomy valley, 
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." 

* La Harpe, in reviewing a French translation of Pope's works, says : 
" ' Le Lutrin ' est un chef d'oeuvre poetique, une de ces creations du grand 
talent, dans laquelle il a su fgrjre beaucoup de rien." On the other hand, 



English Litei^ature. 249 

consisting of twelve cantos of about sixty stanzas each, 
and narrates imaginary wars, with an abundance of de- 
nunciations of the author's enemies ; Boileau's mock- 
heroic, in describing the controversy over the proper place 
for a reading-desk, blames several common ecclesiastical 
faults, and Pope's is too well known to need describing. 
If the French have never written anything superior in 
delicacy and fine-turned raillery to this poem, then their 
literature has not done them justice. 

This passage is pleasing enough, where Ariel, the chief 
of the sylphs, says : 

" Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 
***** 
To save the powder from too rude a gale, 
Nor let th' imprisoned essences exhale ; 
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers ; 
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in showers 
The brightest wash ; to curl their waving hairs. 
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs ; 
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow. 
To change a flounce or add a furbelow." 

But whatever levity there may be here, it disappears, 
and the smile that accompanies it gives way to an un- 
pleasant leer, when we come to such heavy-handed social 
satire as this : 

" Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 
Or some frail china-jar receive a flaw ; 
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade ; 
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade." 

Yet, barring these faults, it is certainly an agreeable 
squib. It was first written without any mention of the 
sylphs ; these were an afterthought. Some critics find a 

one may examine the «' Rape of the Lock," '' et I'on verra cinq chants 
absolument denuees d'action, de caracteres, de mouvement, d'interet, 
d'ide'es, et de variete." 

11* 



250 Englisli Literature. 

close connection between them and the fairies in the 
" Tempest ;" they say that it is a very ap^^ropriate con- 
tinuation of Shakspere's fairy -land, which may mean that 
the description of them in this poem is something like 
what Shakspere would have written had he lived in the 
more prosaic age. This is, of course, a question which 
no one can answer with certainty, but there is room for 
modest doubt. Fairies do not follow the fashions ; when 
hoops and patches come in, wings do not necessarily go 
out, and I find it hard to trace any family connection be- 
tween 

" Come unto these yellow sands, 

And then take hands : 
Courtesied when you have and kissed 

The wild waves whist 

Foot it featly here and there," etc., 
and 

" Know then unnumbered spirits round thee ply, 
The light militia of the lower sky : 
These, the unseen, are ever on the wing. 
Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring," etc. 

And this is not merely saying, what needs not to be 
said, that Pope is not Shakspere; there is an absolute lack 
of resemblance between the imagination of the one and 
the artificial invention of the other. Pope's sylphs lend 
the charm of cleverness to his verse, and any further claim 
in their behalf seems to me monstrous. Still, a poem may 
be less good than Shakspere's best passages, and yet have 
merit ; and, if we do not try to rate the " Rape of the 
Lock" too high, it will be possible to enjoy it. We 
should laugh at a Frenchman who maintained that Boi- 
leau's mock-heroic was to be compared with Shakspere's 
poetical songs. No one could entertain the notion for a 
moment, yet there is no wide difference between Boileau 
and Pope here ; each is able, in his own way, and as con- 



English Liter atu7'e. 251 

temporaries — for contemporaneousness does not always 
follow the dates of the almanac any more than isothermal 
lines do parallels of latitude — they were inspired by the 
same subjects. This, too, is to be borne in mind with re- 
gard to alleged imitations of one poet by another. Be- 
cause one nation does at some time what another did a 
few years earlier, it by no means follows that it is inspired 
by imitation, any more than does the fact that I, who put 
on my thick coat day before yesterday, had any desire, 
conscious or unconscious, of imitating my fellow-country- 
man in Chicago who put his on two days earlier. He was 
the first to be exposed to the northwest blast, that is all. 
Of course, one nation may impose its authority on another 
by virtue of its success ; thus, the brilliant civilization of 
Italy made its literary tenets only the more authoritative, 
but the movement spread, too, as the natural effort to find 
something to take the place of the enthusiasm of the 
Renaissance. They tried to arrange their knowledge, and 
they made it an idol to which almost everything was sac- 
rificed. It seems not to be worth while, then, to trace the 
lineage of the mock-heroic poems. They were as natural as 
shadows. Given the heroic, and the mock-heroic follows; 
the parody following the original as night follows day. 

This work brought Pope a great deal of fame, although 
it added but little to his wealth. He had also published 
his translation of the first book of Statins, some ver- 
sions of Chaucer in imitation of Dryden, his " Eloisa to 
Abelard," " Sappho to Phaon," etc., but he was far from 
rich. His father had a fortune of about £10,000, and when 
he died, in 1717, he left his son an income of three or four 
hundred pounds ; but Catholics paid double taxes, and 
probably there was a good deal of fanatic zeal in the way 
these taxes were assessed and collected. We have seen 
that Pope had nothing to do with government aid to au- 



252 English Literature. 

thors. Most writers of tlie time published their books by 
subscription,* with flattering dedications. Pope now cast 
about for some way of securing independence by his liter- 
ary labors. He determined to make a translation of the 
" Iliad." The booksellers made generous offers, and Pope 
accepted that of Lintot,f who proposed that the book be 
sold by subscription, he himself undertaking to supply 
each subscriber with his copies, to bring the work out in 
six volumes quarto, and to pay to Pope all the product of 
the subscription and, besides, £200 for each volume. He, 
of course, reserved for himself the profits of the succeeding 
editions, and on these he grew rich and was able to leave a 
valuable property for his heirs. There were five hundred 
and seventy-five subscribers, who took six hundred and 
fifty-four copies, so that Pope received £5320 45. The suc- 
cess of this venture emboldened him to undertake the trans- 
lation of the " Odyssey," which he accomplished with the 
aid of two young assistants, Browme and Fenton. For 
the two poems he received £9000 — over £3500 for the 
*' Odyssey," after paying Browne £500 for doing eight 
books and notes, though he declared, in a note, that he 
had done but three ; to Fenton £200. He did four, but 
confessed to only two. This is the first instance of a 
large sum being paid to an author for his work, and it 
may be compared with the £1200 or £1300 paid Dryden 
for his " Yirgil." 

This success made Pope's position secure. The ten 
years' work made him a rich man, entirely independent of 
the government and of patrons. As we have seen, in the 

* The 1688 edition of Milton was one of the first books published in 
this way. Dryden's " Virgil " and the volumes of the Tatler were also 
published by subscription. 

t For Tonson, he undertook an annotated edition of Shakspere, also 
published by subscription. 



English Literature. 253 

condition of things at that time, this was most fortunate. 
For an additional proof listen to these lines of Swift's, 
from his "Libel on the Rev. Dr. Delany and Lord Car- 
teret" (1729), ii. 89 : 

" Deluded mortals ! whom the great 
Choose for companions tete-d-tete ; 
Who, at their dinners, enfamille, 
Get leave to sit whene'er you will. 
Then boasting tell us where you dined, 
And how his Lordship was so kind ; 
How many pleasant things he spoke, 
And how you laughed at every joke ; 
Swear he's a most facetious man, 
That you and he are cup and can ; 
You travel with a heavy load, 
And quite mistake preferment's road. 
Suppose my Lord and you alone, 
Hint the least interest of your own ; 
His visage drops, he knits his brow, 
He cannot talk of business now : 
Or mention but a vacant post. 
He'll turn it off with, ' Name your toast :' 
Nor could the nicest artist paint 
A countenance with more constraint. 

* * * * 
When wearied with intrigue of state 
They find an idle hour to prate. 
Then should you dare to ask a place. 
You forfeit all your patron's grace, 
And disappoint the sole design 

For which he summoned you to dine. 

Thus Congreve spent in writing plays, 

And one poor office * half his days ; 

While Montague, who claimed the station 

To be Msecenas of the nation, 

For poets open table kept. 

But ne'er considered where they slept : 

* Commissioner for licensing coaches. 



2 54 English Literature. 



Himself as rich as fifty Jews 

Was easy though they wanted shoes, 

* * * * 

Thus Steele, who own'd what others writ, 
And flourish'd by imputed wit, 
From perils of a hundred jails. 
Withdrew to starve and die in Wales, 
Thus Gay, the Hare with many friends, 
Twice seven long years the Court attends ; 
Who under Tales conveying truth. 
To virtue forra'd a princely youth : * 
Who paid his courtship with the crowd 
As far as modest pride allowed ; 
Kejects a servile usher's \ place, 
And leaves St. James's in disgrace. 
Thus Addison, by lords caressed, 
AVas left in foreign lands distressed ; 
Forgot at home, became for hire 
A travelling tutor to a squire ; 
But wisely left the Muses' hill. 
To business shaped the poet's quill ; 
Let all his barren laurels fade : 
Took up himself the courtier's trade, 
And, grown a minister of state, 
Saw poets at his levee Avait, 
Hail, happy Pope ! whose generous mind 
Detesting all the statesmen kind. 
Contemning courts, at courts unseen, 
Refus'd the visits of a queen. 
A soul with every virtue fraught, 
By sages, priests, or poets taught ; 
Whose filial piety excels 
Whatever Grecian story tells ; 
A genius for all stations fit. 
Whose meanest talent is his wit ; 
His heart too great, though fortune little. 
To lick a rascal statesman's spittle ; 



* The young Duke of Cumberland (1*726). 
t Gentleman usher to the Princess Louisa. 



English Literature. 255 

Appealing to the nation's taste, 
Above the reach of want is placed ; 
By Homer dead was taught to thrive, 
Which Homer never could alive ; 
And sits aloft on Pindus' head. 
Despising slaves that cringe for bread." 

The rest of the poem is worth reading, for what It shows 
us of Swift's experience with courts.* Swift had been of 



* "-True politicians only pay 

For soHd work, but not for play ; 

Nor ever choose to work with tools 

Forged up in colleges and schools : 

Consider how much more is due 

To all their journeymen than you. 

At table you can Horace quote. 

They at a pinch can bribe a vote : 

You show your skill in Grecian story. 

But they can manage Whig and Tory : 

You as a critic are so curious 

To find a line in Virgil spurious ; 

But they can smoke the deep designs. 

When Bolingbroke with Pulteney dines. 

Besides, your patron may upbraid ye, 

That you have got a place already ; 

An office for your talents fit. 

To flatter, carve and show your wit, 

To snuff the lights, and stir the fire. 

And get a dinner for your hire. 

What claim have you to place or pension ? 

He overpays in condescension." 

Then, after some bitter words on Walpole, he goes on : 
•' But I, . . . 

Can lend you an allusion fitter : 

* * * * 

' Go to affect a monarch's ends. 
From hell a viceroy-devil ascends, — 
His budget with corruptions crammed, 
The contributions of the damned, 



256 English Literature, 

great service to Pope at the beginning of his translation 
in the way of getting him subscribers, for he was at that 
time of great influence. " He instructed a young nobleman 
that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, a Papist, who 
had begun a Homer into English verse, for which, he must 
have them all subscribe, ' for,' says he, ' the author shall not 
'begin to print, till I have a thousand guineas for him.' " 
You will notice that, at the beginning of the collection of 
subscribers, Oxford and Bolingbroke were in power, and 
Swift was their strongest ally in the press. When the first 
volume appeared, 1715, Bolingbroke was in exile, Oxford 
under impeachment, Swift in angry retirement at his 
deanery. Yet Pope managed to keep out of political 
storms. He was careful in this part of his life not to ally 
himself with one party, and he kept himself free from 
compromising dedications, from principle and doubtless 
from policy. In No. 4 of the Guardian, as I have said, he 
denounced the servility w^hich many literary men showed 
in the letters of dedication, saying : " This ^prostitution of 
praise is not only a deceit upon the gross of mankind, 
who take their notion of characters from the learned, but 
also the better sort must by this means lose some part at 
least of that desire of fame which is the incentive to gen- 
erous actions. . . . Even truth itself in a dedication is like 



Which, with unsparing hand, he strows 

Through courts and senates as he goes, 

And then at Beelzebub's black hall 

Complains his budget was too small.' 

Your simile may better shine 

In verse, but there is truth in mine ; . 

For no imaginable things 

Can differ more than gods and kings, 

And statesmen by ten thousand odds 

Are angels just as Y\\\y are gods." 



English Literature, 2^j 

an honest man in a disguise or vizor-mask, and will appear 
a cheat by being dressed so like one. Though the merit 
of the person is beyond dispute, I see no reason that be- 
cause one man is eminent, therefore another has a right to 
be impertinent, and throw praises in his face," etc., etc. 

When the "Iliad" was finished, w^ith the sixth vol- 
ume in 1720, Pope dedicated it to neither Whigs nor 
Tories, who had been equally civil to him, but to Con- 
greve, thus exhibiting an honorable neutrality. Before 
this time, to be sure, Steele had dedicated " The Tender 
Husband" to Addison, 1705, and Gay, 1713, his "Rural 
Sports " to Pope, but these were less important. The 
" Iliad " was, one may almost say, a publication of impor- 
tance to the whole nation. In his preface, too, which ap- 
peared in the first volume in 1715, he paid compliments 
not only to men of various sorts, but also of different par- 
ties. " Mr. Addison was the first whose advice deter- 
mined me to undertake this task ; who was pleased to 
write to me on that occasion in such terms as I cannot re- 
peat without vanity. I was obliged to Sir Richard Steele 
for a very early recommendation of my work to the pub- 
lic. Dr. Swift promoted my interest with that warmth 
with which he always serves a friend. The humanity and 
frankness of Sir Samuel Garth are what I never knew 
wanting on any occasion. I must acknowledge, with in- 
finite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well as sincere 
criticisms of Mr. Congreve." " I must add the names of 
Mr. Rowe, and Dr. Parnell." " But what can I say of the 
honor so many of the great have done me." "His grace 
the Duke of Buckingham." " The Earl of Halifax was 
one of the first to favor me ; of whom it is hard to say 
whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing 
to his generosity or his example." "Such a genius as my 
Lord Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great 



2*58 English Literatare. 

scenes of business, than in all the useful and entertaining 
parts of learning, has not refused to be the critic of these 
sheets and the patron of their writer ; and that the noble 
author of the tragedy of ' Heroic Love,' George Gran- 
ville, Lord Lansdowne, has continued his j^artiality to me, 
from my writing pastorals to my attemjiting the Iliad." 
And the list might be made longer. 

Of the translation itself I shall not speak at any length. 
We have already taken into consideration the style of this 
period, contrasting it with that which it succeeded. There 
we saw how every period demands its own translation of 
the great masterpieces of antiquity and other nations ; 
and we compared Pope's work with Chapman's, and that 
of the many of the present time. I may add here, that 
the number of the competitors for our favor is another 
proof of the unsettled condition of literature. We are all 
trying over the old methods in the lack of any great pres- 
ent inspiration which shall sweep everything before it. 
Since we see nothing in the present, our attention natu- 
rally reverts to the past, and we try to be as simple as the 
ballad- writers, or like Chaucer, or Milton, or to rival Pope 
• — quot honnines tot sententice. Moreover, the tendency 
towards prose translations is in obedience to the dictates 
of precise scholarship, and the general despair of ever 
finding a satisfactory poetical form. In Pope's time, there 
was no doubt about the poetical form to be adopted, and 
Chapman had his choice of all the metres. 

III. When the translation was finished Pope found 
himself a rich man. He bought, in 1719, his famous place 
at Twickenham, which, as Walpole said, he " twisted and 
twirled and rhymed and harmonized," " till it appeared 
two or three sweet little lawns, opening and opening be- 
yond one another, and the whole surrounded with im- 
penetrable woods." His life here is to be found described 



English Literature. 259 

in Mr. Leslie Stephen's volume in the " English Men of 
Letter Series," I will only say here that he lived in com- 
fort, or, as he put it, 

*' , , . thanks to Homer since I live and thrive, 
Indebted to no Prince or Peer alive." 

Yet he saw princes and peers in abundance. Indeed, 
he is said to have fallen asleep at his own table when the 
Prince of Wales was talking to him, and many of the 
most eminent men of England were numbered among his 
guests. Such were Swift, Gay, Atterbury, Arbuthnot ; 
politicians like Bolingbroke, Murray, Lyttelton,Wyndham, 
Lord Oxford, Lord Peterborough, etc. Later we shall 
find Pope's exultation over the joys of life as he tasted 
them at his villa. Yet he was not happy, and the cause 
of his unhappiness was his detestation of the poor writers 
of his time. This detestation he put into verse, and the 
" Dunciad " has secured the unhoped-for immortality of 
numerous petty writers of the first half of the last century. 
Whether they were worth the pains that were taken to 
demolish them, is an open question. The poem is one of 
the English classics, and has been highly praised by nu- 
merous critics, yet the impression that it leaves on the 
reader is not a pleasant one. Pope would have resented 
the notion that he was not a civilized writer, yet here we 
find him indulging in abuse of all sorts of persons, most 
of them to the last degree insignificant, and those who 
were of importance were unjustly attacked. Yet, good or 
bad, even granting that they were all bad. Pope's temper 
in this poem is exactly that of the furious pamphleteers 
whom he wished to depose, of the hack-writers whom he 
never looked upon as fellow-beings. It has been remarked 
by the wise that the foolish are not yet extinct — still the 
world has found a onodus vivendi with these people, and 
has learned at any rate to observe them without excessive 



26o English Literature. 

loss of temper. They are now as vexatious, annoying, 
and pretentious as they were in Pope's time, yet what 
should we think of a man who devoted the best years of 
his life to abusing them ? Disproportionate anger is as 
unfortunate as disproportionate enthusiasm, and Pope's 
fury against incompetence and foolishness is very far 
from the temper with which a man of the world, a truly 
civilized person, regards these inevitable qualities. If 
he had been galled by seeing folly rewarded, incapacity 
triumphant, there might have been some excuse, but even 
then anger would not be becoming ; as it was, however, 
he, the leading literary man of England, one might say 
of Europe, went out of his way to attack a number of 
wretched, scribbling starvelings, to ridicule some whose 
only fault was inability to do anything, and to denounce 
others whom he should have had the intelligence to rate 
higher. Pope had done much to raise the tone of litera- 
ture ; he had taught authors how they might break with 
servility and rise to independence, and then at last he 
made use of the position he had acquired with much honor 
to throw discredit on letters, not so much by exposing 
petty men as by degrading himself to something near 
their level. This, of course, does not apply to the execu- 
tion of his work, but to the rude, brutal spirit that ani- 
mated it. Thus in the second book, when, a monarch of 
Dulness having been chosen, games are instituted in his 
honor — for, like everything else, the humor is heroic and 
pseudo-classical. Some of the games are simply disgust- 
ing, but one of the least objectionable is thus described ; 
Dulness with her court descends 

" To where Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams 
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, 
The king of dykes than whom no sluice of mud 
With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 



English Literature, 261 

* Here strip, my children ! here at once leap in, 
Here prove who best can dash thro' thick and thin, 
And who the most in love of dirt excel, 
Or dark dexterity of groping well,' " etc. 

Here is the description of some who sought the prize, 
" a pig of lead to him who dives the best :" 

"Next plunged a feeble, but a desp'rate pack. 
With each a sickly brother at his back : 
Sons of a day ! just buoyant on the flood. 
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud. 
Ask ye their names ? I could as soon disclose 
The names of these blind puppies as of those." 

Literature is scarcely honored by such support as this. 

Pope always maintained that the provocation came 
from his enemies, and certainly they had adopted enraging 
measures. They said of him, " he is one whom God and 
nature have marked for want of common honesty ;" " great 
fools will be christened by the names of great poets, and 
Pope will be called Homer ;" "a little abject thing," and 
this gem : " Let us take the initial letter of his Christian 
name, and the initial and final letters of his surname, viz., 
A P, E, and they give you the same idea of an Ape as 
his face." " A squab short gentleman— a little creature 
that, like the frog in the fable, swells and is angry that it 
is not allowed to be as big as an ox." Yet this was but a 
part of the regular language of the critics of the day, and 
called for no especial answer, certainly no answer in kind. 
Dryden had been called an ape, an ass, a frog, a coward, a 
knave, a fool and a thing in very much such language as 
that used about Pope. Thus, " Poet squab endured with 
Poet Maro's spirit ! an ugly croaking kind of vermin 
which would swell to the bulk of an ox." These were the 
words of Luke Milbourne, a persistent foe of Dryden, but 
how did Dryden answer him? In the preface to his 



262 English Literature. 

" Fables " (" Versions of Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Ovid "), 
we find this passage : 

"As a corollary to this preface, in which I have done 
justice to others, I owe somewhat to myself : not that 1 
think it worth my time to enter the lists with one Mil- 
bourn and one Blackmore, but barely to take notice that 
such men there are who have written scurrilously against 
me, without any provocation. Milbourn, who is in orders, 
pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that I have 
fallen foul on priesthood : if I have, I am only to ask par- 
don of good priests, and am afraid his part of the repara- 
tion will come to little. Let him be satisfied that he shall 
not be able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I 
contemn him too much to enter into competition with him. 
His own translations of Virgil have answered his criticisms 
on mine. If (as they say, he has declared in print) he pre- 
fers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made 
him the same compliment ; for it is agreed on all hands, 
that he writes even below Ogilby : that, you will say, is 
not easily to be done ; but what cannot Milbourn bring 
about ? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live 
together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. 
It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill 
against me ; but upon my honest word I have not bribed 
him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his 
pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be glad, if I could persuade 
him to continue his good offices, and write such another 
critique on anything of mine : for I find by experience he 
has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any 
of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of 
them. He has taken some pains with my poetry ; but no- 
body will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I 
had taken to the church (as he affirms, but which was 
never in my thoughts) I should have had more sense, if 



English Literature. 263 

not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my 
benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. — But his 
account of my manners and my principles are of a piece 
with his cavils and his poetry : and so I have done with 
him for ever." 

Certainly this disposes of Milbourne more completely 
than does Pope's resuscitation of him, and his new ven- 
geance in the " Dunciad," when he adorns Smedley, the 
successful diver, with cassock, surcingle, and vest : 

" ' Receive,' he said, ' these robes which once were mine, 
Duhiess is sacred in a sound divine.' " * 

Yet Dryden had shown his power of using verse as a 
means of attack, and notably in the three lines of brief 
description of his publisher, Ton son, which he wrote when 
that gentleman had refused him an advance of money : 

" With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, 
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured f hair, 
And fro\vsy pores, that taint the ambient air." 

" Tell the dog," Dryden said to the messenger, " that he who 
wrote these can write more." But these were suiRcient. 
In his "Mac Flecknoe," Dryden set the example of the 
satirical poem which Pope afterwards followed, and in the 
second part of the " Absalom and Achitophel " he resumed 
the attack on Shadwell ; but Dryden, in all his attacks, 
preserved his self-possession, his superiority to his subject, 

* Vide Renan : " II y a chez lui (Lammenais) trop de colere et pas 
assez de dedain. Les consequences litteraires de ce defaut sont fort 
graves. La colere amene la declamation, et le mauvais gout; le dedain, 
au contraire, produit presque toujoui's un style delicat. La colei-e a besoin 
d'etre partagee ; elle est indiscrete, car elle veut se communiquer. Le de- 
dain est une fine et delicieuse volupte qu'on savoure a soi seul ; il est dis- 
cret, car il se suffit" ("Essais de Morale et de Critique," p. 188). 

f "Amboyna," act i. sc. i., Beaumont says: "I do not like his oath, 
there's treachery in that Judas-colour'd Beard." 



264 English Literature. 

while Pope lost his. ' For Dryden's coarseness in some 
parts of his denunciation of his foes there is more excuse 
than for Pope's, which is less robust, and less to be par- 
doned by consideration of the usual language of the time. 
Dry den retained his superiority to his victims. Pope low- 
ered himself to ribaldry. Dryden, as I said, maintained 
his self-possession, and any loss of self-possession is fatal, 
or at least injurious, to artistic performance. We do 
not want the actor,* by excess of emotion, to become 
speechless when he should be speaking, or the lyric poet 
to burst into prose, or the painter to be blinded by tears 
so that he cannot distinguish his colors ; and especially 
are we repelled when a great man gives way in public to 
undue wrath. There is nothing dignified in anger, there 
is dignity in self-control ; and the reader of the "Dun- 
ciad" is sure to be struck by the curious exhibition it 
offers us of Pope's state of mind concerning paltry writers, 
who only needed to be neglected to perish. 

All the satirical writers of France and England write 
with a certain violence, as if they composed their verses 
to the inspiration of the beating of a bass-drum ; but here 
we have the additional fire of wrath with unworthy ob- 
jects. It will be fairer, however, to judge of this from the 
study of the evidence. We shall then find, as in nearly 
all that Pope wrote, abundant example of his wit and in- 
genuity. Dryden, it will be remembered, celebrates the 
appointment of Elkanah Shadwell as Flecknoe's successor 
on the throne of the kingdom of Dulness, and he describes 
the ceremonies at his coronation. Pope chose for his suc- 
cessor Theobald, the first writer on Shakspere who took 
the pains of studying the contemporary literature. Pope 

* Vide Diderot, " Paradoxe," viii. 384, and Lessing, " Hamburger Drama- 
turgic " (3'^' Stiick). Mrs. Kemble has also some interesting remarks on 
the subject in her " Records of a Girlhood," p. 246. 



English Literature, 265 

had himself prepared an edition of Shakspere ; it appeared 
in six large quarto volumes, for which Pope received 
£217 125. The work was sold at first for a guinea a vol- 
ume, but out of the seven hundred and fifty copies printed 
one hundred and forty remained unsold, and were disposed 
of at 16s. apiece. Pope's work as an editor was value- 
less. He, to be sure, said some good things in his pref- 
ace,* where he gave evidence of very sincere and warm 
admiration for Shakspere. His plays, compared with those 
of modern times, are, he says, like an " ancient, majestic 
piece of Gothick architecture, compared with a neat modern 
building : the latter is more elegant and glaring, but the 
former. is more strong and more solemn," His emenda- 
tions are worthless. Thus he is amazed by Shakspere's 
frequent use of the double comparative, as "more bet- 
ter," which Theobald showed was not a misreading ; and 
the best proof of Theobald's accuracy, though he did not 
go far, is this, that Warburton, Pope's editor and admirer, 
accepted many of his suggestions in the revision of Pope's 
edition. Pope, too, marked with quotation-marks all the 
lines that seemed to him particularly fine. Theobald 
naturally incurred Pope's particular hostility by criticis- 
ing his Shakspere, and was first chosen for the favorite of 
Dulness ; but afterwards, in a later edition (1743), he was 
deposed and Colley Gibber was put in his place. Gibber 
was a writer of light and somewhat amusing plays, and of 
an * Apology ' for his own life, which is still entertaining. 
As Mr. Leslie Stephen states it : "Pope owed him a grudge. 
Gibber, in playing the * Rehearsal,' had introduced some 
ridicule of the unlucky * Three Hours after Marriage.' 
Pope, he says, came behind the scenes foaming and 
choking with fury, and forbidding Gibber ever to repeat 

* "To judge, therefore, of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rules is like trying 
a man by the laws of one country who acted under those of another." 

12 



266 English Literature. 

the insult. Gibber laughed at him, said that he would re- 
peat it as long as the ' Rehearsal ' was played, and kept 
his word. Pope took his revenge by many incidental hits 
at Gibber, and Gibber made a good-humoured reference to 
this abuse in the 'Apology.' Thereupon Pope, in the new 
* Dunciad,' described him as laughing on the lap of the 
goddess, and added various personalities in the notes. 
Gibber straightway published a letter to Pope, the more 
cutting because still in perfect good-humour, and told the 
story about the original quarrel. He added an irritating 
anecdote in order to provoke the poet still further. . . . 
The two Richardsons once found Pope reading one of 
Gibber's pamphlets. He said, ' These things are my diver- 
sion ;' but they saw his features writhing with anguish, 
and young Richardson, as they went home, observed to 
his father that he hoped to be preserved from such diver- 
sions as Pope had enjoyed." The change showed more 
bad temper than judgment. Theobald, although chosen 
for an unworthy motive, was undeniably dull, but Gibber, 
who was selected for the same reason, was certainly not 
dull. If he had been, he would have been overlooked. To 
us of a later generation, there is not only a feeling of dis- 
appointment in seeing this man of genius killing flies with 
fury, there is also a wearisome monotony about the flies 
he has killed, as we see them pinned to the pages of the 
"Dunciad." Shoals of notes are necessary to explain who 
Smedley is, who Goncanen,who Osborne, who Arnall, and 
when we have learned who they all are we cannot care for 
the uninteresting collection. Doubtless the buzz of this 
one, or the persistent return of the other to the galled 
spot, was enraging, but there is little profit for us in hear- 
ing how this one infuriated Pope, or what a torment the 
other was. Two lines are devoted to one man, named 
Ralph — 



English Literature, 267 

" Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls, 
And makes night hideous ; answer him, ye owls," — 

whose early attempts at writing poetry are nientioned in 
Franklin's too brief autobiography. Bentley, who was a 
great scholar — indeed, one of the last of great English 
scholars — is attacked as if he were wretchedly incompe- 
tent, and put in the same line with the other men who 
were really worthless. I have spoken of the first two 
books ; in the third is a description of the impending rule 
of dulness over the world, and especially over Great Brit- 
ain (ii. 178). The fourth book was added under Warbur- 
ton's influence. It turned to ridicule pedants and people 
interested in collecting memorials of the past, a pursuit 
that was then looked upon as proof of a morbid taste ; but 
it is confused, and, to our thinking, it shares the fault it 
denounces by being dull. The book and the poem ends 
with the famous apostrophe, which Pope could not repeat 
without emotion, and which has been warmly admired by 
Dr. Johnson and Thackeray. Thackeray, indeed, went so 
far as to say "no poet's verse ever mounted higher than 
that wonderful flight with which the ' Dunciad ' con- 
cludes :" 

" She comes, she comes ! the sable throne behold 
Of night primeval and of chaos old," etc, (ii. 199). 

Certainly such praise seems strange. I will not go into 
any description of the torrent of abuse which this poem, 
not unnaturally, brought down on Pope's head. Many of 
the people whom he attacked retorted in kind, and litera- 
ture was still further defiled by a multitude of squibs in 
denunciation of this abusive poet. As we have seen, the 
poem occupied him more or less for nearly the last twenty 
years of his life, and Pope was continually adding new 
names and new notes to this Rogues' Gallery, proving that 
the other boy began the quarrel, and urging that other 



268 English Literature. 

poets of acknowledged fame had also risen in their might 
against their persecutors, but none of them had so far 
shared the errors he condemned as Pope did. Boileau had 
spoken with severity, and Regnier with frankness, but nei- 
ther with the cold grossness which mars the "Dunciad," 
Avhich, in spite of its occasional clever lines, is a blot on 
the literature of the time — a proof of the thinness of the 
polish on which they prided themselves. There breathes 
through the poem not merely Swift's coarseness, but the 
brutal spirit which darkens the middle of the last century 
— the same thing which stained the comedy of the Res- 
toration, faded away under Addison's influence, and ap- 
peared again here, and in some of the novels of the period 
that was then opening. The whole movement in England 
towards this pseudo-classicism did not properly agree with 
the conditions of the native English spirit.. We have seen 
how in Addison it was an artificial rule imposing on a man 
of the best natural taste, and in Pope's "Dunciad" it 
showed most lamentably its incapacity to purge the Eng- 
lishman of his innate tendencies. The proper home — by 
adoption, to be sure — of the whole change was France. 
It was an exotic in England. 

IV. Yet what England failed to attain in literary pol- 
ish — and Pope cannot be said to be wanting in this — it 
made up in the acquisition of certain things which were 
of more importance in the development of civilization. 
The freedom which England won by the Revolution of 
1688 made it the home of philosophical thought. France 
and England were at that time the leading intellectual 
centres of Europe, and so of the world. Italy was sunk 
in sloth and intellectual torpor. Between 1450 and 1525 
it had discovered the glories of Greek art and litera- 
ture, and had communicated its knowledge to Europe. 
What the Renaissance in Italy did was to re-establish the 



English Literature, 269 

dignity, tlie importance of human nature, and to break 
with the absolutism of the Middle Ages. Before its 
splendor ceased, it, as we saw, fell to worshipping Latin 
models, and it taught this less important lesson to neigh- 
boring countries. Then, as an Italian writer, Algarotti, 
said of his nation, *' the one who had got up early before 
the others, and drudged a good deal, might rest somewhat 
in the daytime," But the artistic enjoyment of life that 
fascinated Italy was followed by a strong reaction in favor 
of authority, and this was most strongly expressed by 
Spain, where the literary rules which arose in Italy took 
the least hold on the writers. Spain, by means of the 
Jesuitism which was the Catholic counter - wave to the 
Reformation, asserted the divine right of monarchy, and 
freedom was crushed out of the greater part of Europe. 
As Hillebrand* says, "Think of the difference between 
the mediaeval conception of sovereignty and the one which 
was the soul of Louis XIV., nay, even of the Protestant 
James I. of England, and down to the smallest German 
and Italian princelings of that time ; between the vanity 
of the feudal royalty of the Middle Ages, with its almost 
independent vassals, and the uniformity of the modern 
monarchy with its passive obedience and its VJEtat c'est 
moV The failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588 pre- 
served the freedom of England from the direct yoke of 
Spain, and although its literary influence, as we have seen 
it in Euphuism, and in the long romances, was consider- 
able — and, for that matter, we shall soon see it again when 
we come to study the origin of the English novel — ^in 
England the absolutism of monarchs was completely over- 
thrown by the revolution of 1688. England remained free 
to scientific workmen, and freedom is the very breath of 

* Vide his invaluable " History of German Thought " (Amer. ed.), p. 10 
et seq. 



2/0 English Liter atur^e. 

scientific work. The English philosojjhy, from Bacon to 
Newton and Locke, was what inspired the French litera- 
ture of the last century. In England itself it had less 
influence on the literature. Various causes combined to 
bring about this result. For one thing, all the most fa- 
mous French writers of the last century were interested 
in philosophy, and they carried out the English notions 
with a relentless logic that soon transported them into a 
sort of pure ether out of a world which has no such easy 
solution for its problems as logic, while in England the 
test of suitability of the philosophy to practical affairs 
was continually applied. Another interesting contribu- 
tion to literature from England was the appearance, early 
in the last century, of the love of nature which we shall 
soon begin to trace, and the assertion of the people, as 
distinguished from a literary circle, in literature. The 
pseudo-classicism which we have been studying did not 
recognize anything but a cultivated class. Literature was 
a freemasonry of which the founders were Horace and an 
imaginary Aristotle. The populace was merely a dim 
background against which were to be seen kings and 
lords, who were studied by men of letters. Even now the 
literary class is derided by men of action, as a collection 
of useless idlers, and the feeling was much more natural 
one hundred and fifty years ago. But in England and 
Spain the influence of the Roman classicism was weaker 
than elsewhere. In Spain, the people were kept in subjec- 
tion by the reactionary rule of a priesthood which stamped 
out all the Spanish love of adventure and conquest to- 
gether with literature and the arts, just as Puritanism in 
England threw back the fine arts and endangered the free 
growth of literature for a long time, but the natural yearn- 
ing of the populace for literary expression was not wholly 
lost. There was bigotry, and there was enthusiasm, too, 



Eiiglish Literature. 271 

which conquered classicism, and English literature rose in 
power from the French rules that for some time seemed 
to the careless observer to be triumphant. 

The empirical philosophy inspired a sort of free thought, 
as was inevitable. Europe, in breaking with the Middle 
Ages, gave a violent wrench to the continuity of the 
Church of Rome. While every century brings forth some 
new peril to an historic Church, it brings, too, the added 
weight of greater antiquity ; the Church can point back 
to a greater past ; it accumulates dignity. Even heretics 
cannot look with indifference on the long history of 
Catholicism. Its age alone inspires reverence. Suddenly, 
however, a remoter past was discovered with qualities in 
which Christianity had no share, and old beliefs were 
quickly shattered, or at least shaken. We nowadays have 
learned to respect history, but in Pope's time history 
meant a record of degradation ; the Middle Ages were a 
black chasm between two periods of light — its learning 
was but the mumbling of ignorance, its religion, supersti- 
tion. The populace, we must understand, was unconscious 
of these discoveries, but the cultivated felt them most 
keenly. It is no wonder that the Jesuits regarded the 
new learning with abhorrence ; in their eyes it was full of 
mischief to all that they held dear. In Italy, the Church 
had been carried away by the sweetness of the new 
pleasure-loving creed, but it was soon called to a sense of 
its responsibilities. In France and Germany, religious 
wars raged for a long time. In England, when the 
Reformation was complete, religion found itself con- 
fronted by the new spirit which questioned, by the new 
doubts of men who could find no authority in the past. 
They had to draw their reasons from recent discoveries ; 
the old, uninquiring faith was gone, they were forming a 
new creed : " Philosophy, hitherto in alliance with Chris- 



272 English Literature. 

tianity, began to show indications of a possible divorce. 
Thougb philosophers might use the old language, it 
became daily more difficult to identify the God of phi- 
losophy with the God of Christianity. How could the 
tutelary deity of a petty tribe be the God who ruled over 
all things and all men ? How could even the God of the 
mediaeval imagination, the God worshipped by Christians 
when Christendom was regarded as approximately identi- 
cal with the universe, be still the ruler of the whole earth, 
in which Christians formed but a small minority, and of 
the universe, in which the earth was but as a grain of 
sand on the seashore ? Or how, again, could the personal 
Deity, whose attributes and history were known by tradi- 
tion, be the God whose existence was inferred by philoso- 
phers from the general order of the universe ; or regarded 
as a necessary postulate for the discovery of all truth ? 
If there was no absolute logical conflict between the two 
views, the two modes of conceiving the universe refused to 
coalesce in the imagination." * Moreover, as Mr. Stephen 
goes on to show, "the great astronomical and geographi- 
cal discoveries enlarged men's conceptions of the Infinite." 
The world became acquainted with the fact that there 
were three hundred million Chinese who, it was tauntingly 
asserted, would be damned because " they knew nothing 
of an event which, so far as they were concerned, might 
as well have happened on the moon." The vast majesty 
of the universe was unfolded to men who, as Mr. Stephen 
says, had hitherto been able to " think of their little 
planet as itself the universe, consisting of a little plain, 
a few miles in breadth, and roofed by the solid vault car- 
rying our convenient lighting apparatus. . . . Through 

* Vide L. Stephen's " History of English Thouglit in tlie Eighteenth 
Century," i. 81, etc. 



English Literature. 273 

tlie roof of the little theatre on which the drama of man's 
history had been enacted, men began to see the eternal 
stars shining in silent contempt upon their petty imagin- 
ings." The question was how to combine nature, as it 
was so rapidly unfolded, with the old creed. The whole 
controversy cannot be described here — perhaps the best 
account of it is to be found in the book from which I 
have been quoting, Leslie Stephen's " History of English 
Thought in the Eighteenth Century." We have to do 
with but a small part of it — namely, that part which in- 
spired Pope's " Essay on Man." 

The Deists in England who led the attack on orthodoxy 
were a despised set. Newton, after his astronomical dis- 
coveries, and his assertion, since confirmed by the spectro- 
scope, that probably all the celestial bodies were composed 
of substances like those known in the earth, devoted him- 
self to the interpretation of the prophecies. All the great 
men,* with scarcely an exception, devoted themselves to 
upholding the orthodox belief, to reconciling it with the 
new discoveries, and they were attacked only by obscure 
writers, whose morals and manners condemned their argu- 
ments, who were detested for their vulgarity. Even 
Addison forgot some of his urbanity in speaking of them 
{Spectator, ^o. 186). Swift mentioned them with con- 
tempt ; and in the " Dunciad " Pope hurled scorn at them, 
but in time he came under the influence of Lord Boling- 
broke, and was fascinated by that nobleman's philosophy. 
Bolingbroke wrote down his views on religious matters 
when the religious controversy was over, and his position 
saved him from contempt, but his immunity was especial- 
ly due to the fact that the question had ceased to be a 
burning one. Pope was a free-thinker, although he de- 



* Locke, Bishop Butler, Berkeley, Bentley, Waterland, and Warburton. 

12* 



274 English Literature. 

tested the avowed free-thinkers. There is no inexplicable 
inconsistency in this : of course, not all of the English 
members of Parliament who vote against the admission of 
Mr. Bradlaugh would consent to be burned at the stake in 
defence of the Church of England. Pope's Catholicism 
sat lightly on him, and he was familiar with the intel- 
lectual movement of his time, which had been caught in 
snatches by the earlier deists and put to such ignoble 
use as the ridicule or demolition of stray texts. Boling- 
\ broke's inspiration in the " Essay on Man " is well known, 
\ and some commentators have gone to work to show how 
I great is Pope's indebtedness to his friend, even in the 
^ very matter of language, for half lines are often found in 
the poem which were taken from Bolingbroke's prose. 
He borrowed thoughts and phrases, too, from Shaftes- 
bury. One example out of many is to be found in Leslie 
Stephen's "Pope" (p. 167), and more examples are given 
in Elwyn's notes. These need not occupy us. The poem 
is chiefly interesting as a readable statement of the form 
which infidelity took in the minds of some English thinkers 
of the last century. It is an exceedingly inconsistent 
statement, because what Bolingbroke had gathered rather 
at random was further confused by Pope's disinclination 
to thorough systemization, and by his aversion to open in- 
fidelity, which in England especially has always implied 
contempt for the social system. That Pope was greatly 
agitated by the accusations of infidelity that were brought 
against the poem is well known. He did not publish it 
under his name at first, but waited to observe the effect it 
might have on the public. Yet it is not surprising that the 
general public failed to detect the deism of the " Essay," 
because not only are there inconsistencies in the poem, 
but there are many passages of such brilliant and eloquent 
appeal in behalf of virtue that they might well disarm 



English Literature. 275. 

criticism. It was far from being a religions poem, like 
the "Paradise Lost." It was an attempt, as Pope said, 
" to vindicate the ways of God to man." * We can see 
by the "Essay on Man" bow the horizon had been 
widened by the many discoveries, and the consequent 
discussions. Whatever may have been the condition 
of Bolingbroke's mind. Pope's was in a state of flux 
concerning the subjects he treated in this poem. As 
Mr Stephen says, "Pope felt and thought by shocks and 
electric flashes." Hence he accumulated a number ot 
heterogeneous thoughts, from which no coherent system 
can be formed. After all, it makes little difference what 
a poet writing on such a subject believes; what makes a 
poem is the clearness and fervor with which he expresses 
what he has to say, whether his message be one of hope 
or of hate, of belief or doubt, of optimism or pessimism. 
Pope lacked any animating belief ; he was impressed by a 
number of theories that were in the air and that he had 
come across in his reading, and he had a wonderful gift ot 
expression. Consequently we find some of the common- 
places of his day admirably stated. 
■ Every reader has noticed the extreme cleverness with 
which Pope puts many of the disconnected thoughts of 
the " Essay," and this success has kept it alive to the pres- 
ent day. In its time it was accused of unorthodoxy and 
of incoherency, but the energy of the best passages has 
always found admirers. They are still part of the classics 

of the language. 1.^.^1. 

Pope's literary workmanship was always good, but tne 
taste of the present time requires cooler praise to be given 
to the total performance. Where he is first is m his epis- 

* Milton, " Paradise Lost," i. 26, had said, " Justify the ways of God to 



man. 



2'] 6 English Literature. 

ties and satires, althougli at times even here, as in the 
" Dunciad," he is open to the charge of finding fault with 
poverty rather than with more serious crimes, and of con- 
demning opposing politicians with more malice than wis- 
dom. Still, our withers are unwrung, and we may get an 
excellent notion of the heat of political feeling at the time 
of Walpole's administration, and of the social gossip at 
that time, from these pages, which supplement the me- 
moirs of Pope's contemporaries. 

We notice that these satires are very unlike the rugged 
Juvenalian satires of the earlier English poets. The model 
which had the most influence on Pope was the work of 
Boileau, whose collected works were put into English in 
1708. Boileau adopted the Horatian form, and his satires 
and epistles are full of translations from Horace, with ap- 
plication to contemporary persons and matters. Pope's 
predecessors — Hall, Donne, and Oldham — were inspired 
by a sort of assumed indignation against crimes which 
they exaggerated vrith theatrical fury. Pope was inspired 
by genuine feeling, even though we may perceive that his 
anger was, as Mr. Mark Pattison says, perverse and one- 
sided. He always had a concrete object for his wrath ; 
he did not build up men of straw to knock down with fine- 
sounding lines. Yet, to quote again from Mr. Pattison, 
"That poetry which is to be permanent must deal with 
permanent themes. Satirical is not more than any other 
poetry absolved from this obligation. Satire, even when 
individual, must never lose sight of just and noble ends. 
Of all petty things nothing is so petty as a petty quarrel. 
Pope too often allows the personal grudge to be seen 
through the service of public police which he puts on his 
work. He tries to make us think he is descending from 
a superior sphere to lash scribblers, who had not only 
sinned against taste by their foolish verses, but had out- 



English LiterMure. 277 

raged his moral sense by the scandalousness of their lives. 
The thin disguise of offended virtue is too often a 
cloak for revenge. His most pungent verses can always 
be referred back to some personal cause of affront — a line 
in The Bee,'^ or a copy of verses upon him which was 
handed about in manuscript. He knowingly threw away 
fame to indulge his piques." 

It was in this part of Pope's work that the French influ- 
ence is most clearly visible. The tendency to modernize 
the classic poets had already appeared. Oldham's versions 
of Juvenal and Horace with contemporary references, and 
Dryden's version of Boileau's "L'Art Poetique," were ex- 
amples of this tendency to apply foreign poems to domes- 
tic circumstances. Rochester's "Allusion to the Tenth 
Satire of the Fifth Book of Horace " was the first regular 
example in English of what Pope afterwards brought to 
perfection. In France, satire had found a home where it 
flourished even more than in England. The first to intro- 
duce there this method of writing was Yauquelin de la 
Fresnaie (published 1612), who declared: "Done il ne 
faut douter que la Satyre ne soit une espece de poesie, qui 
sera merveilleusement plaisante et profitable en nostre 
Fran9ois, pouveu qu'on s'abstienne de diffamer personne 
en particulier, et qu'on ne se licentie par vengeance on 
autrement a faire des vers pleins de medisance, d'iniure, 
et de menterie, tels que sont les Cocqs-a-l'Asne " (i. 130). 
Yet Yauquelin's numerous satires have more historical 
than poetical value ; they lack the vigor of those of 
D'Aubigne's, and the animation of Regnier's. We notice 
in France the swiftness with which that country became 
civilized after the long wars of the sixteenth century. 
We find Corneille and Racine almost treading on the heels 



* A weekly pamphlet for which Budgell {inter alios) wrote. 



278 English Literature. 

of Hardy, just as in England we see the Spectator and 
Pope's neat verse following a rugged past. This will show 
us how eager was the yearning, of cultivated men at least, 
for civilization. Boileau was a most useful ally in clear- 
ing away the encumbrances of the past, and his satirical 
poems still remain as models of neat and dexterous verse. 
The best qualities of Pope — condensation and intellectual 
clearness — we find in Boileau, who lacks Pope's occasional 
roughness of temper and personal bias. How good Pope 
was at his best we may see in the " Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
not," which is really Pope's masterpiece. 

Since Boileau's and Pope's satirical writings, in spite 
of great changes in the popular taste, still hold their place 
as classics, we may form a more complete notion of their 
success in their own day,,when these two writers said in 
the best form what their contemporaries were most anx- 
ious to hear. Boileau's message on literary matters was 
almost omnipotent in France, and through France almost 
everywhere in Europe, until a comparatively recent time ; 
and though in his own country, since the outbreak of ro- 
manticism, his reputation has suffered, his great literary 
skill is still admired. Of course it is not merely his word 
that controlled the taste of this great people — he was but 
the best mouthpiece of the prevailing sentiments ; but his 
wit and skill lent additional force to what he had to say. 
In very much the same way Pope's name is given to the 
whole of the English literary movement of the last cen- 
tury, though with great inaccuracy, as I shall presently 
try to show. Since both these writers especially distin- 
guished themselves in satirical poetry, one cannot help 
wondering what it was in the conditions of their times 
that made satire so powerful a weapon. A satirist nowa- 
days — one who should write in verse, at least— would be 
laughed at for his pains. This form of writing was sub- 



English Literature, 279 

sequently tried, to be sure, by Gifford in his " Baviad " 
and his "Maeviad," by Byron in his "English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers," to mention the most prominent exam- 
ples, but these writers only galvanized what w^as a dead 
form. An attack on the satire had been already made 
by Bowles in his edition of Pope (1797), when he asked 
whether the attitude of the satirist is one which any indi- 
vidual can assume towards his fellow-men. This attitude 
of condemnation of our fellow-men is taken by every per- 
son living, at home and abroad, in private talk, in letters, 
and in public writing, but its mode of expressing itself is 
changed. Mr. Pattison says that just as the prophet comes 
forward to rebuke sin, so does the satirist deliver the judg- 
ment of society on social conduct, literary taste, and such 
matters as the law does not attempt to cover. That is 
true, but the prophet and the satirist would now both be 
laughed at. Society has taken the control of the matters 
that formerly interested satirists into its own hands. It 
has become a democracy where every man is invited to 
contribute what he knows, and no one is permitted to 
rise and speak, as if from an upper -story window, to 
the populace below. And that, I take it, was what the 
satirist did. It was all very well when education was con- 
fined to comparatively few, and the general bent was 
towards rudeness, but nowadays no such self - exaltation 
could be endured. Satire has become the possession of 
the populace ; it does not belong to a privileged class. 
We should be as impatient of a professional satirist as we 
are of any one who undertakes to give instruction in eti- 
quette ; and yet the present day is not wholly indifferent 
to matters of deportment, as any one may see by reading 
the novels of the last century. 

As we noticed a few moments ago, the whole poetical 
movement of the eighteenth century is generally said to 



28o English Literature. 

have been made under Pope's influence. But the exact 
truth of this statement may well be doubted. For one 
thing, we find frequent proof of what Mr. Symonds states 
("Renaissance in Italy," v. 2) : " It seems to be a law of 
intellectual development that the highest works of art can 
only be achieved when the forces which produced them 
are already doomed, and in the act of disappearance." 
Only in this way, perhaps, can the artist get the perspec- 
tive without losing the original inspiration; but, whatever 
the reason, we see this law confirmed by all our observation. 
Dante expressed all the majesty of the Middle Ages just 
as they were about to disappear forever. Even in Shak- 
spere's lifetime, the Elizabethan drama, in the hands of 
his contemporaries, was beginning to decline, and, at the 
very moment when Pope had routed his adversaries, had 
proved and illustrated the neatness of his chosen form and 
the power of his cool common-sense in the discussion of 
many baflling questions, the rule of his formal verse began 
to be doubted, and new voices were heard discussing 
strange problems.* Cowper, to be sure, said that Pope 
"made poetry a mere meclianic art, 
And every warbler had his tune by heart," 

but this statement shows the exaggeration of first at- 
tempts at organized revolt, and fails to do sufiicient 
justice to some of the contemporary resistance to his 
influence. Swift, for instance, represented a very differ- 

* Allan Ramsay, the painter, and son of the poet, April 29, 1'7'78 {vide 
Boswell's " Johnson "), said : " I am old enough to have been a con- 
tempoi-ary of Pope. His poetry was highly admired in his lifetime, more, 
a great deal, than after his death." Johnson : " Sir, it has not been less 
admired since his death ; no authors ever had so much faith in their own 
lifetime as Voltaire and Pope ; and Pope's poetry has been as much 
admired since his death as dui-ing his life : it has only not been as much 
talked of; but that is owing to its now being more distant, and people 
having other writings to talk of." 



English Literature. 281 

ent form of art. Gay's view of life was very unlike that 
of Pope, and Prior, whom we have already caught trying 
to imitate Spenser, wrote little poems for which he was 
much more indebted to French poetry than to English. 
A fuller study of the growth of other forms, even in 
Pope's time, we must delay until we turn to the study 
of the poetical outbreak towards the end of the century, 
when we shall have occasion to notice various indications 
that many writers were seeking greater freedom than rea- 
son and formality could give them. Now, laying aside the 
poetry for a while, let us observe what was done in prose 
at this time. 



282 English Literature. 



CHAPTER YII. 

The most striking and important appearance in tlie 
English literatm-e of this period is that of the novel. Let 
us see how this came into existence and how it flourished. 
To do this it will not be necessary to refer to the stories 
of the later Greek writers, to discuss Apuleius's " Golden 
Ass," or Lucian's novelettes, still less to make extracts from 
the recently discovered Egyptian novels, or to begin an 
argument as to whether the books of Job and Ruth are or 
are not ancient Hebrew novels — all of these questions have 
their value, but they need not trouble us now. We may 
take it for granted that the telling of stories is one of the 
fundamental attributes of the human race. In the Middle 
Ages, our ancestors had a number of stories, chiefly in 
poetical form, for their delectation. Such were, first, those 
treating religious subjects, as versions of the Old and New 
Testaments, lives of saints and martyrs, and the accounts 
of pious men and women — e. g., "The Journey of St. 
Brandanus to the Earthly Paradise" {cir. 1121), the "Life 
of the Blessed Virgin," the " Life of Thomas a Becket " (by 
Garnier, cw. 1182), the "Story of the Seven Sleepers," the 
" Life of St. Elizabeth," etc. Secondly, Norman and Bre- 
ton mythical and historical tales, such as "Le Roman du 
Rou," " Robert le Diable," " Richart sans Paour," of Nor- 
man origin ; of Breton origin, the stories about Brutus, the 
Trojan, the Knights of the Holy Grail — about Merlin, 
Lancelot, Perceval, etc. Thirdly, the Frankish romances, 



English Literature. 283 

about Charles the Great, " Le Roman d' Alexandre " {cir. 
1150), a paraphrase of Curtius, with flattering references 
to Louis VII. and Philip Augustus; the " Roman de Troie," 
" Le Livre du Preux et Vaillant Jason," the " Contes " and 
" Fabliaux," short stories, the prose conte being distin- 
guished from the rhymed fabliau by its greater length. 
Their subjects were countless and varied, and are especially 
to be noticed for this — that while the romances were in a 
great measure, though not exclusively, the possession of 
the higher classes, the fabliaux were the exclusive prop- 
erty of the populace. No precise description can be given 
that shall apply to all. It is well to notice that they re- 
ferred to the incidents of every-day life, which were nar- 
rated in a comic way. In them we find the originals of 
some of Chaucer's least poetical tales, and of some of the 
stories that are still handed down from one age to an- 
other by word of mouth ; * they turned to ridicule all pre- 

* The wanderings of stories form an interesting part of literary history. 
The fact is, that there is nothing rarer than originality, and a good novel 
in one language is sure to be translated into every other. A curious in- 
stance of the wide use of a single plot may be seen in the travels of the 
story of the "Widow of Ephesus." It gets its name from the narrative as 
it appears in Petronius ; but it is also a Chinese tale, as well as Persian 
and Arabian and Turkish. Its earliest appearance in India was in the 
Pantchatantra, and it probably was carried to neighboring countries by 
the Bud-dhists. It entered Europe in the collection, the "Seven Sages," 
and speedily found its way into many fabliaux. The old story was told by 
Eustace Deschamps (in the fourteenth century), Brantoine (152Y-1614), 
dramatized by Pierre Brinon (1614), and was told over again half a cent- 
ury later by La Fontaine, in one of his contes. St. Evremond (1678) has a 
translation of the same story in Petronius ; in 1682 it was again dramatized ; 
1702, by La Motte; 1714, a comic opera; Voltaire, in "Zadig" (1747); 
Retif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), in one of his " Contemporaines ;" 
Alfred de Musset, in "La Coupe et les Levres" (1832). 

It appeared in Italy and Spain with the "Seven Sages." It early made 
its appearance in England and Scotland in metrical romances of the thir- 



284 English Literature. 

tensions to greatness and excessive uprightness ; they 
were the streak of realism that always exists in the hu- 
man race, and most strongly when contrasted with artifi- 
cial pomp. Many of the stories thus told probably de- 
scribed actual incidents, or some that, perhaps, had been 
handed down by tradition from very remote times ; oth- 
ers may be traced to the " Gesta Romanorum " and other 
collections of stories made up from the Greeks and from 
Eastern nations : the Crusades helped to introduce these. 
*' Reynard the Fox " is very possibly a combination into a 
coherent whole of a number of stories, the origin of which 
is like that of " Bre'r Fox " and " Bre'r Rabbit " in the 
Southern States, and like the many similar stories told in 
various remote and separate regions. Later in the Middle 
Ages, we come across the allegorical stories, of which the 
*' Roman de la Rose " is the best known.* Of course this 

teenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries ; in a separate volume in 1665 ; 
in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Dying" (1651); Chapman dramatized it in his 
comedy, " The Widow's Tears," early in the seventeenth century ; J. Ogil- 
by (died 1676) wrote a poem narrating the story; Charles Johnson, a 
farce (1730); Goldsmith, in his "Citizen of the World" (published in 
1'762). 

In Germany, we find it mter alios in Gellert, Wieland, Musaus, and 
Chamisso ; Lessing began a play with this plot ( vide Grisebach, " Die 
treulose Wittwe," Stuttgart, ISVY). 

Voltaire knew that the Chinese were familiar with this story ; vide his 
" Sottisier" (Paris, 1881), p. 22. A French translation of the Chinese ver- 
sion had been published by a Jesuit priest in l^SB. 

* An interesting chapter of literary history would be a full discussion 
of allegories in literature during and since the Middle Ages, In the " Ro- 
man de la Rose " allegorical personages abound, drawn as crudely as the 
figures in ancient illustrations who are labelled on the placard issuing 
from their mouths. In the mysteries, too, we come across them. This 
proved to be a long-lived literary form. In the heroic romances of Mile. 
de Scudery, for instance, we find instances of its survival, as in the " Carte 
du Tendre," which was once famous for its ingenious representation of 



English Literature. 285 

is a very crude and incomplete description of mediaeval lit- 
erature. I can show now merely the abundance of mate- 
rial, the general lines in which it ran, in the course of the 
fifteenth century, when prose began to be written more 
freely. In this new guise the old romances had even 
greater popularity. These versions appeared in Germany, 
England, and France, and the latest of the tales of chival- 
ry was the " Amadis de Gaule," of which I have already 
spoken. This book, which may be read in Southey's 
modern English version, differs from the others in that it 
and its many successors continued popular even when 
chivalry had already faded away. They are not so much 
inspired by knighthood after the manner of the people's 
poetry ( Yolkspoesie) ; they describe it with artistic enthu- 
siasm. These novels were admired in Germany, France, 
and Spain until "Don Quixote" (1605-15) gave them 
their death-blow. Thus we read in Burton's "Anatomy 
of Melancholy" (1621) : "If they read a booke at any 
time, 'tis an English chronicle, ' Sir Huon of Bordeaux,' or 
^Amadis de Gaule,' a playe- booke, or some pamplett of 
newes ;" and elsewhere he speaks of " such inamoratos as 
read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, 'Amadis de 

the tender passion. This notion was not original with her. Livet, in his 
" Precieux et Precieuses," p. 1'73, sa_ys that Charles Sorel, author of " Fran- 
cion," in another book had described something of the kind, as had an- 
other writer. All this belongs rather to French literature, but it has a 
meaning for us when we recall the corresponding treatment of his story 
by Bunyan, in his " Pilgrim's Progress." What the French writers had 
done profanely, he did in behalf of religion, so that this wonderful book is 
one of the last expressions of medisevalism in English literature. In art 
there correspond with it the quaint decorations of cathedrals, and some of 
the old illustrations of MSS. — e. g.^ P. Lacroix, " Vie Religieuse et Militaire 
au Moyen Age," etc., p. 448, the reproduction of an old picture in a missal 
of the " Fortress of Faith," besieged by heretics and the impious, and de- 
fended by the Pope, etc. 



286 English Literature. 

Gaul,' the ' Knight of the Sun,' the ' Seven Champions,' 
*Palmerin de Oliva,' 'Huon of Bourdeaux,' etc. Such 
many times prove in the end as mad as 'Don Quixote.' " 
" Don Quixote " had been put into English by Thomas 
Shelton (1612-20). The original Amadis was a genuine 
expression of chivalry just as it was about to disappear, 
and it was really of enormous influence on later literature. 
It not only inspired numerous successors, it affected the 
style of historians, just as Sir Walter Scott's novels al- 
tered the whole method of historical writing, made bulky 
volumes fascinating, and history picturesque. In Italy, 
however, these tales of chivalry lost their hold on the peo- 
ple. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto all show in- 
timacy with them, but the literary tendency ran in the 
direction of the brief, concise tale, in a few words, of 
some adventure. For one thing, the classics expelled these 
impossible romances, and the inclination of the Italians 
towards the peaceful arts and. commerce made them in- 
tolerant of the vast impossibilities which seemed entranc- 
ing to less polished nations. Even Ariosto and Pulci, 
when they chose the romances for their subject, wrote 
about them in a mocking spirit ; and Boiardo civilized 
them, so to speak, when he wrote his "Orlando." But 
they disappeared from literature before the oiovella, the 
most characteristic form of Italian literature. It was 
built up on the French fabliaux, and on the short stories 
that reached Europe from the East, in the " Hitopa- 
desa." This work, Dunlop states {vide his "History of 
Fiction," i. 382), was preserved by an Indian king as one 
of his greatest treasures. In time a Persian king ( at 
the end of the sixth century) sent a learned physician 
into India to get a copy of this famous book. This phy- 
sician accomplished his object by inducing an alleged sage 
to steal the book, the bribe he employed being "a prom- 



English Literature. 287 

ise of intoxication." The physician translated the book 
into Persian, thence into Syriac and Arabic; about 1100 
it was translated from Arabic into Greek, in the thir- 
teenth century from Greek into Latin, thence into Ger- 
man, Spanish, and Italian, and from Italian into English 
in 1570. This, we must understand, is merely one of the 
streams that supplied the abundant material of the Ital- 
ian novelists. Curiously enough, the novella never de- 
veloped into the modern novel — that production seems 
to belong only to nations which have had a drama : it 
is the modern version of the play. Yet these short 
stories of the Italian novelists supplied the English dram- 
atists with abundant subjects.* Shakspere's "Twelfth 
Night," "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," "Measure for 
Measure," "Merchant of Venice," "Much Ado about 
Nothing," " Cymbeline," are to a greater or less extent 
derived from Italian stories, and what is true of Shak- 
spere is true of many of his contemporaries and succes- 
sors. On the modern novel these short stories had but 
little influence. 

The tales of chivalry, especially those about Amadis 
and his successors, had a long popularity, and they, as I 
have said, were only finally crushed by " Don Quixote," 
in which we find that the parody keeps close to the text 
of the "Amadis." Yet Cervantes did not begin this at- 
tack on the crumbling tales of chivalry. The picaresque 
novels, as they are called, had already made their appear- 
ance, and these it may be well to describe at some length, 

* Boccaccio was translated in full in 1620, but many of his stones — 
Bandello's and Cinthio's — had been translated in William Paynter's 
"Palace of Pleasure" (1566). The first volume contains sixty novels, 
and the second thirty- four. The stories, however, came through the 
French, being taken from Belleforest's French version, as T. North's 
" Plutarch " was taken from Amyot's translation. 



288 English Literature. 

because they undoubtedly had vast influence on the Eng- 
lish novel ; and they acquired this, it is well to notice, 
by not being simply destructive, but by being construc- 
tive, by bringing forward new ideals and new subjects. 
No one of the picaresque novels approaches the greatness 
of "Don Quixote," which is really inimitable, and is now 
read for itself without care for what it says about chival- 
ry. It was what was latent in the early novels that has 
been developed by subsequent Avriters. No complicated 
form of literature steps forth at once in a condition of 
completeness ; the drama makes its way to excellence only 
by successive changes, and the novel advances only gradu- 
ally. Of course this is the only way in which works of art 
attain excellence; and in the picaresque stories we catch the 
modern novel, so to speak, in the bud, and we shall be able 
to trace its modifications down to the most recent times. 

That the tales of chivalry were fascinating, that they 
encouraged the imitation of some of the deeds and many 
of the emotions that inspired chivalry, is not only in it- 
self probable, but it is confirmed by outside evidence. The 
novel and society, for that matter, play, as it were, into 
each other's hands. The novel pictures society, and so- 
ciety sees itself mirrored in the novel, and takes its image 
for a model or a warning. Hence the power of a novel 
as a moral teacher. Indeed, literature is a phonographic 
sheet on which are expressed the thoughts and emotions 
of all ages, and in the novel we catch society as it really 
was and is, rather than as it was when it was especially 
endeavoring to be magniloquent. Nowadays we continu- 
ally find in the newsj^apers that two boys, aged eleven and 
thirteen, were found in the train going to New York, each 
armed with a shot-gun and a bowie-knife, and provided 
with his father's pocket-book, their intention being to 
shoot buffaloes and fight Indians, and that they were in- 



English Literature. 289 

spired thereto by reading dime-novels. In the same way, 
Cortez and Pizarro,* when they came to America, not only 
felt the genuine greed of conquerors, but compared them- 

* Prescott, "Conquest of Peru" (ed. 1868), i. 190, and "Conquest of 
Mexico" (Phila. 1874), i. 47. 

In 1543, Charles the Fifth prohibited the introduction of books of 
chivalry into the American colonies, and forbade their being printed or 
even read there. In 1555, the Cortes presented to the king a petition 
(that required only the royal signature to become law), urging the de- 
struction of these romances. Thus (Prescott, " Biographical and Critical 
Essays," pp. 143 and 634) : " Moreover, we say that it is very notorious 
what mischief has been done to young men and maidens, and other per- 
sons, by the perusal of books full of lies and vanities, like Amadis and 
works of that description, since young people especially, from their natural 
idleness, resort to this kind of reading, and becoming enamoured of pas- 
sages of love or arms, or other nonsense w^hich they find set forth therein, 
when situations at all analogous offer, are led to act much more extrava- 
gantly than they would otherwise have done. And many times the daughter, 
when her mother has locked her up safely at home, amuses herself with 
reading these books, which do her more hurt than she would have re- 
ceived from going abroad. All which redounds not only to the dishonour 
of individuals, but to the great detriment- of conscience, by diverting the 
affections from holy, true and Christian doctrine, to those wicked vanities 
with which the wits, as we have intimated, are completely bewildered. To 
remedy this, we entreat your Majesty that no book treating of such matters 
be henceforth permitted to be read, that those now printed be collected 
and burned, and that none be published hereafter without special license ; 
by which measures your Majesty will render great service to God as well 
as to your kingdoms," etc. 

Cf. " Eastward Ho " ( by Chapman, B. Jonson, and Marston ), iii. 2 
(1605), " I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us." 
..." Why, man, all their dripping-pans . . . are pure gold ; and all the 
chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold ; all the 
prisoners they take are fettered in gold ; and for rubies and diamonds, 
they go forth on holidays and gather them by the sea-shore, to hang on 
their children's coats and stick in their caps, as commonly as our children 
wear saffron-gilt brooches and groats with hoals in them." 

And Sidney, "Defense of Poesy." " Truly I have known men, that even 

13 



290 English Literature. 

selves with the dragon -slayers whose deeds had fired their 
imagination from boyhood. We know, for instance, that 
the Mississippi was discovered by De Soto when he was 
searching for the fountain of youth — the Eldorado, as it 
was called, seemed to fulfil every promise ; and we may be 
sure that the conquest of Mexico or Peru would not have 
formed the romantic story that it did if its conquerors had 
not been fed on romance. We denounce them for their 
cruelty to their enemies, but the tales they had read were 
full of the slaughter of heretics. They, like the rest of 
the world, breathed the air of their time. Or, if we de- 
sire further proof, it may be found without difiiculty. In 
one of the early novels, in the picaresque style, published 
in France ("Histoire Comique de Francion," ed. Delahays, 
1858, p. 128) : "It became my pastime to read nothing 
but books of chivalry, and I must tell you that this occu- 
pation sharpened my courage and gave me unparalleled 
desires to seek adventures in the wide world. For it 
seemed to me that it would be as easy with one blow to 
cut a man in two, as it would be to cut an apple. I was 
full of sovereign content when I saw a horrible massacre 
of giants cut into mincemeat. The blood which flowed 
from their wounds formed a stream of rose-water in which 
I bathed most deliciously ; and sometimes I imagined that 
I was the youth who kissed the maiden with green eyes 
like a falcon. I use the language of those true chronicles. 
In a word, my mind w^as full of nothing but castles, or- 
chards, combats, enchantments, delights, and love-making, 
and when I remembered that this was all nothing but fic- 
tion, I said that it was wrong to blame reading of this 

with reading Amadis de Gaul, which God knoweth, wanteth much of a 
perfect Poesy, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, 
liberahty and especially courage." 



English Literature. 291 

kind, and that henceforth it was but to lead the sort of 
life most akin to that described in these books ; thereupon 
I began to blame the vile conditions of the men of this 
century, whom I have to-day in great honor." Then he de- 
scribes at great length his reaction from the restraints of the 
bourgeois society which was beginning to acquire power. 
Let us now see what the picaresque* novel was, and 
perhaps we shall be able to make out how it came into 
existence. The first one, the " Lazarillo de Tormes," was 
written by Mendoza, in his twenty -first year, when he 
was a student at the University of Salamanca, but first 
published only in 1553 (being delayed possibly from 
fear of the Inquisition). Mendoza, who was born early 
in the sixteenth century (1503-75), was one of the dis- 
tinguished men of his time, as a diplomatist and a his- 
torian. With those sides of his character, however, we 
have nothing to do. We shall examine only his work 
as a novelist. The hero, who tells the story in the 
first person, and whose name is that of the book, is the 
son of a miller who lived on the banks of the Tormes. 
His father dies early, and the boy, when eight years old, 
makes his first start in life. " About this time, a blind 
man came to lodge at the house, and thinking that I 
should do very well to lead him about, asked my mother 
to part with me for that purpose. My mother recom- 
mended me strongly, stating that I was the son of an ex- 
cellent man who died in battle against the enemies of our 
faith." (He had been found guilty of stealing grain from 
his customers ; he had "joined an armament then preparing 

* Picaro is a rogue. The word is well defined in an interesting article 
in the CornJdll for June, 1875, p. 671 : " The picaro is not necessarily a 
thief, or a cheat, or an impostor, but one who has no scruple about lying, 
cheating, or steahng, under the slightest possible circumstances." The 
distinction is most subtle. 



292 English Literature. 

against the Moors, in the quality of mule-driver to a gen- 
tleman ; and in that expedition, like a loyal servant, he, 
along with his master, finished his life and services to- 
gether." His father, " being convicted of bleeding his cus- 
tomers' sacks, suffered with such exemplary patience the 
reward appointed by the law in cases of that nature, that 
his friends have ground to hope he is among the number 
of the saints" [ed. 19, 1777] : the reward consisted in his 
" being whipt through the whole town, and the city arms 
imprinted on his shoulders.") " She confided me to his care 
as an orphan boy, and entreated him to use me with kind- 
ness. The old man promised to receive me, not as a ser- 
vant, but as a son; and thus I commenced service with my 
new though blind and aged master." The way in which the 
blind man fulfilled his promise was as follows : " We left 
Salamanca, and having arrived at the bridge, my master 
directed my attention to an animal carved in stone in the 
form of a bull, and desired me to take him near it. When 
I had placed him close to it, he said, ' Lazaro, if you put 
your ear close to this bull, you will hear an extraordinary 
noise within.' In the simplicity of my heart, believing it 
to be as he said, I put my ear to the stone, when the old 
man gave my head such a violent thump against it, that I 
was almost bereft of sense, and for three days after I did 
not lose the pain I suffered from the blow." This expe- 
rience opened his eyes to the ways of the world he was 
entering. Moreover, his blind master nearly starved him. 
He used to carry his food in a linen knapsack, and give 
the boy a few scraps, and then close the bag ; the boy 
made a small rip in the seam of the bag and would take 
out choice pieces of meat, bacon, and sausage, and then 
close the seam. Moreover, " all that I could collect, either 
by fraud or otherwise, I carried about me in half -far- 
things ; so that when the old man was sent for to pray, 



English Literature, 293 

and they gave him farthnigs (all of which passed through 
my hands, he being blind), I contrived to slip them into 
my mouth, by which process so quick an alteration was 
effected, that when they reached his hands they were in- 
variably reduced to half their original value. The cun- 
ning old fellow, however, suspected me, for he used to say, 
' How the deuce is this ? ever since you have been with 
me they give me nothing but half -farthings ; whereas be- 
fore, it was not an unusual thing to be paid with half- 
pence, but never less than farthings. I must be sharp 
with you, I find.' " The old man was unusually careful of 
his jar of wine, and the boy was forever trying to outwit 
him, and get a chance to drink of it. Soon he was de- 
tected and the old man used to fasten it to himself by a 
string attached to the handle. Consequently, the young 
rogue got a large straw and drew the wine through it. 
After that, the blind man kept it between his knees, and 
held his hand over the mouth. The boy consequently 
bored a little hole into the bottom, which he closed very 
delicately with wax. "At dinner time, when the poor 
old man sat over the fire, with the jar between his knees, 
the heat, slight as it was, melted the little piece of wax, 
and I, feigning to be cold, drew close to the fire, and 
placed my mouth under the little fountain in such a man- 
ner that the whole contents of the jar became my share. 
When the old man had finished his meal, and thought to 
regale himself with his draught of wine, the deuce a drop 
did he find, which so enraged and surprised him, that he 
thought the devil himself had been at work ; nor could 
he conceive how it could be. ' Now, uncle,' said I, ' don't 
say that I drank your wine, seeing that you have had 
your hand on it the whole time.' " But the old man felt 
all over the jar, and found out the trick that had been 
played on him, but said nothing. The next time the boy 



294 English Literature, 

was stealing the wine, the blind man raised tlie jar and 
broke it over the boy's face, bruising him severely, and 
afterwards the old man was perpetually maltreating the 
boy. When bystanders would remonstrate, he would nar- 
rate the boy's rogueries so that those who listened would 
say, " Thrash him well, good man ; thrash him w^ell ; he 
deserves it richly !" The boy's revenge consisted in lead- 
ing the blind man over the worst roads, over the sharpest 
stones, and through the deepest mud. " It is true that my 
head and shoulders were subjected in consequence to the 
angry visitations of his staff ; and though I continually 
assured him that his uneasy travelling was not the result 
of my ill-will, but for the want of better roads, yet the 
old traitor had too much cunning to believe a word I 
said." Among his other tricks, when his master was once 
cooking a sausage, this boy stole the sausage and substi- 
tuted a turnip, for which he was again beaten. The next 
day was wet, and as he led the blind man on his round of 
begging, the boy devised this ingenious plan, which he 
thus narrates : " On our return we had to pass a small 
stream of water, which with the day's rain had grown 
quite large. I therefore said, ' Uncle, the brook is very 
much swollen ; but I see a place a little higher, where by 
jumping a little we may pass almost dry-shod.' ' Thou 
art a good lad,' said the old man ; ' I like you for your 
carefulness. Take me to the narrowest part, for at this 
time of year, it would be dangerous to get our feet wet.' 
Delighted that my plot seemed to succeed so well, I led 
him from beneath the arcades, and led him to directly 
opposite to a pillar, or, rather, to a large stone post, which 
I observed in the square. ' Now, uncle,' said I, ' this is the 
place where the brook is narrowest.' The rain was pour- 
ing down, and the man was getting very wet ; and Avhether 
it was by his haste to avoid it, or, as is more probable, 



English Literature. 295 

Providence at that moment deprived him of his usual 
cunning, that he might fall into my snare, and give me 
my revenge, he believed me and said, ' I^ow place me op- 
posite the spot, and do you jump yourself.' I placed him 
directly opposite the pillar so that he could not miss it, 
and leaping over myself, I placed myself just behind the 
post, whence I shouted, ' Now, master, jump as hard as 
you can, and you will clear the water.' The words were 
hardly out of my mouth when the poor old rogue started 
up as nimbly as a goat, took a step or two backwards to 
get an impetus, which lent his leap such force, that in- 
stead of alighting on soft ground, as he supposed he 
should do, he gave his poor bald pate such a smash 
against the pillar that he fell to the ground without sense 
or motion. ' Take that, you unhappy old thief,' said I, ' and 
remember the sausage ;' then leaving him to the care of 
the people who began to gather, I took to my heels as 
swiftly as possible through the town gates, and before 
night reached Torrejos. What became of the old man 
afterwards I don't know, and neither did I ever give my- 
self any pains to find out." 

After thus getting rid of one master, the boy ran until 
he got to a place called Maqueda, where he fell in with a 
priest, into whose service he entered. But " the old blind 
man, selfish as he was, seemed an Alexander the Great, in 
point of munificence, in comparison with this priest, who 
was, without exception, the most niggardly of all miser- 
able devils I have ever met with. It seemed as if the 
meanness of the whole world were gathered together in 
his wretched person. It would be hard to say whether he 
inherited this disposition, or whether he had adopted it 
with his cassock and gown." (This last sentence was 
stricken out by the Inquisition.) Here the boy went 
through another course of starvation, smelling the string 



296 English Literature. 

of onions in the garret and sucking tlie dry bones on 
which the priest had meagrely dined. At mass, the priest 
watched every coin that fell into the plate. The bread 
and wine left from the church he would lock up in a chest, 
saying, " ' You see, my boy, that priests ought to be very 
abstemious in their food. For my part, I do think it a 
great scandal to indulge in food and wine as many do.' 
But the curmudgeon lied most grossly, for at convents and 
funerals, when we went to pray, he would eat like a wolf, 
and drink like a mountebank ; and now I speak of funer- 
als — God forgive me, I was never an enemy to the human 
race but at that unhappy period of my life, and the reason 
was solely, that on these occasions I obtained a meal of 
victuals. Every day I did hope and pray that God would 
be pleased to take his own. Whenever we were sent for 
to administer to the sick, the priest would of course desire 
all present to join in prayer. You may be certain I was 
not the last in these devout exercises, and I prayed with 
all my heart that the Lord would take pity on the afflicted, 
not by restoring him to the vanities of life, but by reliev- 
ing him from the sins of this world ; and when any of 
these unfortunates recovered — the Lord forgive me — in 
the anguish of my heart I wished him a thousand times 
in perdition ; but if he died no one was more sincere in 
his blessings than myself. During all the time that I was 
in this service, which was nearly six morfths, only twenty 
persons paid the debt of nature, and these I verily believe 
that I killed, or, rather, that they died of the incessant 
importunity of my prayers." 

Once, however, when the priest was away, a tinker, or, 
as he thought, an angel in the guise of a tinker, came 
along, whom the young rogue told that he had lost the 
key of the chest, and the man fitted one for him, so that 
he had access to the loaves. But, of course, he had to 



English Literature. 297 

help himself only sparingly after his first hungry thefts 
were discovered. Then he stole some more, and made 
holes in the chest as if rats had been at it. When those 
holes were stuffed up he made new ones. His master was 
amazed, " What can it mean ?" he asked ; " as long as I 
have been here, there have never been rats before." And 
he might say so with truth ; if ever a house in the king- 
dom deserved to be free from rats it was his, as they are 
seldom known to appear when there is nothing to eat. 
Then the priest set a trap, but the boy stole the cheese 
and ate it with more of the bread. Then some one sug- 
gested that the food was stolen by a snake, and the priest 
was forever jumping up to find the snake. Meanwhile 
the boy slept with the key in his mouth for the sake of 
safety ; but one night his breath made it whistle, and the 
priest, feeling sure that now he had caught the snake by 
its hissing, came with a club, and meaning to kill it, but 
he hit the boy on the head, bruising him severely, and 
finding the key. As soon as the boy had recovered he 
was discharged by his master, who said, " No one will ever 
doubt that you have served a blind man ; but as for me, 
I do not require so diligent or so clever a servant." Then 
he betakes himself to Toledo, and enters the service of a 
new master, a grandee of great splendor, who is also in- 
clined to practise starvation. " He had an air of ease and 
consequence " which persuaded the boy to think that this 
was just the situation he desired. But this esquire, though 
he made to the world a great show of elegance, was really 
without a penny. The boy then was thrown on his wits, 
and had to beg his food from door to door. The supply 
he gathered in this way he shared with his master, for 
whom he feels very genuine sympathy. Soon, however, 
a law was passed against vagrancy, and they both began 
to suffer ; but the master managed to get a little money, 

13* 



298 English Literature. 

which they spent in food, but the landlord came for his 
rent and the esquire disappeared, leaving the boy to shift 
for himself. With his fourth master, a friar, he stayed 
but a little while ; and then he entered the service of a 
dealer in Papal indulgences, the description of whose per- 
formances gave the writer an opportunity to make some 
remarks which did not please the Inquisition. This new 
master he detected in his impositions, so that he left him 
in disgust. Then he entered the service of a chaplain, and 
made a little sum of money by selling water, after which 
he became the servant of an alguazil, and married an 
ignoble woman. Here the novel was left in an unfinished 
state, although its publication was soon followed by that 
of a continuation by another hand, with more adventures; 
one of which was that the hero was saved from shipwreck 
and dressed so as to represent a merman, and was so ex- 
hibited in many towns of Spain. He finally escaped, and 
after some adventures reached a hermitage. The original 
hermit died soon after, and this hero assumed his dress 
and lived on the contributions of the charitable people of 
the neighborhood — an incident which is also to be found 
in ^'Gil Bias," in the history of Don Raphael (v. i.). 

I describe this story at some length, because it is the 
earliest of the picaresque novels, and is remarkable in 
many ways; Not only is the whole tone diametrically 
opposite to that of the tales of chivalry, but the book is 
worthy of attention for the way in which it breaks a 
wholly new path for literature. In itself it is curious, and 
as the leader of one of the great movements in modern 
writing it is deserving of great respect. It had no prede- 
cessor, but the author managed to see and to put down 
some of the characteristics of the life about him. The 
Spanish peasant had acquired importance in the wars that 
had devastated that country in the protracted struggle 



English Literature. 299 

against the Moors, and the numberless proverbs in " Don 
Quixote " show how his character had been formed, how 
he had learned wisdom in the only way in which wisdom 
can be learned, through experience ; and they prove how 
unlike his practical good-sense was to the fantastic notions 
of the Spanish knights, who were still under the delusion 
of the splendor of chivalry. In the reign of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, several knights went into foreign parts, " in 
order to try the fortune of arms with any cavalier that 
might be pleased to venture with them, and so gain honor 
for themselves, and the fame of valiant and bold knights 
for the gentlemen of Castile." And Ticknor says : " Cas- 
tillo, another chronicler, tells us gravely, in 1587, that 
Philip II., when he married Mary of England, only forty 
years earlier, promised that if King Arthur should return 
to claim the throne he would peaceably yield to that 
prince all his rights ; thus implying, at least in Castillo 
himself, and probably in many of his readers, a full faith 
in the stories of Arthur and his Round Table." Yet 
alongside of these fantastic people was the populace, 
made up of shrewd men living by their wits, compressing 
their wisdom into proverbs, which you will notice are 
always abundant in a subjected race or class. Prosperous 
people never make proverbs; they have leisure, or, at least, 
freedom for discussion ; but among the oppressed they 
are current as convenient, easily remembered condensa- 
tions of the lessons of life. They pass from mouth to 
mouth as safe expressions, when long denunciations or 
asseverations would be full of danger. This quality, 
perhaps, combines with their brevity and picturesque- 
ness in making proverbs popular among the uneducated. 
Notice their abundance in the East, in Spain, and Russia, 
and among the former slaves in the South. The nat- 
ure of the people struck Mendoza, aristocrat though he 



300 English Literature. 

was, and this was strange enough when we consider how 
rare it is for a writer to see through the mists of the 
literary atmosphere of his times. Yet when a man has 
this power, when living in an artificial time — and it is the 
inevitable tendency of all literary movements to become 
artificial, to substitute mechanism for originality — the re- 
action is a great one, and in the most unreal times we find 
an undercurrent which only assumes importance in the 
works of men of ability, reacting violently against the 
accepted forms. When Pope writes pastorals, and poetry 
becomes didactic. Swift paints the gross side of reality ; 
when chivalry fires the brains of half the world, the other 
half is telling ribald anecdotes or beginning to draw pict- 
ures of actual life. To be amazed at the contrast is like 
being amazed at the existence of comedy alongside of 
tragedy, or that shadows are black when the sun is shin- 
ing bright. It is only in a fog that there are no contrasts 
of light and shade. 

Another important trait of these novels is the fact 
that their writers went back to the people for their sub- 
ject; and even now we daily speak of the people as if they 
were a race, valuable, to be sure, to the curious student of 
natural history, but in other respects remote from our- 
selves. Without referring to the political bearings of 
this misunderstanding, I will merely say that literature, 
which is not a thing apart from human interests, follows 
the same path with political changes, and that the whole 
course of literature at the present time is in the direction 
of democracy. Certainly the novel has shown the way, 
and the most important original literary form of modern 
times has owed the greater part of its strength to the fact 
that it has studied humanity, and where it has, in the 
natural course of events, grown artificial, it has found new 
strength by returning to the study of real life. We shall 



English Literature. 301 

have further instances of this as we go on with our inves- 
tigation of literature. 

That the " Lazarillo " was popular cannot be doubted. 
It ran through Spain like wildfire ; it was translated into 
French, English, and German. The first English transla- 
tion appeared in 1586 — thirty-three years after the first 
publication — and was followed by many more. The nine- 
teenth appeared in 1777 (the twentieth in 1789), which is 
about ten editions a century, or one every ten years. 
Naturally enough, the success of this novel inspired 
other writers to the imitation of this form of writing. 
One of the finest was Matthew Aleman's " Life of Guz- 
man de Alfarache" (1599), of which twenty-five Spanish 
editions soon appeared, as well as two French transla- 
tions, one by Le Sage; a German translation in 1615; 
and English translations in 1623, 1630, 1634, and 1656, 
under the name of " The Rogue, or the Life of Guzman \ 
de Alfarache." * The hero is the son of a Genoese 
merchant, who had settled in Spain. After his death, 
the young fellow runs away from home and begins his 
adventures. On reaching Madrid, he starts in life as a 
beggar, and comments on the motley crowd that passes 
him as he stations himself at the street-corner. Soon he 
sets up as a sharper, and is forced to betake himself to 
Toledo, where he plays the part of a man of fashion until 
all his money is lost or spent, when he goes to Barcelona, 
and thence, ma Genoa, to Rome, the paradise of beggars. 
One of the most amusing of the incidents is his ingenuity 
in painting his leg in such a way that it deceived a cardi- 
nal, who imagined him very ill, and had him taken to his 
own house to be cared for by physicians. One of them 
Guzman overhears declaring the ailment is a fraud — he 

* Fielding says " The Spanish Kogue " was Jonathan Wild's favorite 
book (" Jonathan Wild," chap. iii.). 



302 English Literature. 

had once already been flogged when detected in this de- 
ception by neglecting to whiten his ruddy cheeks — and 
Guzman runs in, acknowledges his sins, but shows the 
doctors that it will be much more lucrative for them to 
pretend to carry him through a long illness. To this 
they consent, and he gradually becomes a miraculous 
cure. He remains here long as a page, playing various 
tricks, then he makes his way through Italy back to 
Spain, where he marries. This marriage proves unfortu- 
nate, and after his wife's death Guzman enters the uni- 
versity of Alcala, in order to obtain a benefice. He 
marries again ; a worthless wife she proves to be, but 
no worse than her husband, who finally, when he and 
his wife are banished from Madrid, becomes the cham- 
berlain of an old lady, but manages her affairs so ill 
that he is arrested and sent to the galleys. His fellow- 
slaves try to engage him to enter a plot to deliver the 
vessels to the corsairs ; he betrays the plot, receives his 
freedom for a reward, and employs his time in writing 
his life. This story, too, like "Gil Bias" and "Don 
Quixote," contains many episodes. The fashion of epi- 
sodes was long lived. We find them in Fielding and 
Smollett, in Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister," and in " Sand- 
ford and Merton." 

Then comes the " Life of Paul the Sharper," by Que- 
vedo (1580-1645), one of the most distinguished men of 
his day. He was a profound scholar, and an eminent 
writer on moral and political philosophy, as well as a 
famous poet, who, at the age of twenty-three, was honored 
by the praise of Lipsius and all his learned contemporaries. 
He is of interest, too, as the first man who is mentioned in 
history as having gone to live in a hotel in order to be 
freed from domestic cares. He must have known other 
counter-sorrows, if the account of the inns of the time con- 



English Literature. ■ 303 

tained in most of the picaresque novels are to be believed, 
and the accuracy of their writers may be attested by all 
who have travelled in Spain. This novel is perhaps the 
wittiest of all.* It begins thus : " I was born at Segovia; 
my father's name was Clement Paul, a native of the same 
town ; I hope his soul is in heaven. I need not speak of 
his virtues, for these are unknown, but by trade he was a 
barber, though so high-minded that he took it for an 
affront to be called by any name but that of a tonsor of 
beards, or the gentleman's hair-dresser. They say he 
came of a good stock, — and it must have been a vine- 
stock, — as all his actions showed a remarkable affection 
for the refined blood of that glorious genealogical tree." 
But I shall quote no more. I have not forgotten that we 
are studying English, not Spanish, literature. There were, 
besides, "La Picara Justina " (1605) ; and the "History 
of the Life of the Esquire Marcos de Obregon" (1618), 
which was of great service in the construction of " Gil 
Bias." 

That the picaresque novels owed much, especially the 
earliest of them, to the Italian stories, we may readily be- 
lieve. But they differ from the originals, if originals they 
were, by the fact that they compose a long and coherent 
novel, the different chapters of which remind us of some 
of the separate Italian tales. In justice to the Spaniards, 
we must remember the greatness of the step they made in 
making whole novels, and in tracing the gradual modifica- 
tions of character which are required in stories of this sort. 
Those I have mentioned, however, were not all. Cervantes 
wrote some short stories: his " Exemplary Novels " abound 
in the humor of the picaresque school, and, as I have said, 
the " Don Quixote" contains much that is inspired by them, 

* This " Paul the Sharper" was translated in 1651 



304 English Literature. 

especially the whole of Sancho Panza's relation to the Don. 
His cowardice, shiftiness, and comic treatment of every- 
thing are part of the same thing. There is, of course, this 
great difference, that " Don Quixote " is one of the great 
books of the world, while the others are but clever tales. 

The picaresque novels, as I have said, spread t)ver Eu- 
rope, and inspired countless imitations. Even in Germany 
the inspiration was felt. Grimmelshausen (1625-76) wrote 
his " Simplicissimus " (1668), the hero of which, in one of 
the continuations, retires to a desert island, where he lives 
for some time. We shall have occasion to refer to this in- 
cident when we speak of " Robinson Crusoe." This novel 
ins^^ired many others of a similar kind. In France, too, the 
picaresque novels had great influence. The best of the 
French imitations was Sorel's "Histoire Comique de Fran- 
cion" (1622 and 1633), a book now nearly forgotten, but 
in its time enormously admired.* Sorel wrote another 
volume, " Le Berger Extravagant," ridiculing the pastoral 
stories. In the " Francion " we have the life of a rogue 
told with great fidelity, and the story is especially valuable 
for the light it throws on the life of the time. All the 
complicated society of France, early in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, is mirrored here; whole classes of people pass before 
us in review, a chapter, for instance, being devoted to a 
delineation of the literary men of that day.f Then came 



* In English, by several hands, 1703. 

f Sorel, in " L'Ordre et I'Examen des Livres Attribues h, I'Auteur de la 
Bibliolhbque Frangaise " (quoted in Demogeot, " Litt. fran9aise au XVII® 
Siecle," p. 327, note): " Nos romans eoraiques sontchacun autant d'originaux 
qui nous representent les caracteres les plus supportables et les plus diver- 
tissants de la vie humaine, et qui n'ont point leur sujet des gueux, des vo- 
leurs, et des faquins, comme Gusman, Lazarille, et Buscon ; mais des 
hommes de bonne condition, subtils, genereux, et agreables . . . et, de ce 
eot6, nous n'avons rien h envjer aux etrangers," 



English Literature. 305 

Scarron's "Roman Comique" (1651), which tells of the 
adventures of a company of strolling players. They had 
just left one town because their doorkeeper had murdered 
an officer, and they reach another, and agree to act that 
night in the tennis-court. Since, however, the full com- 
pany wal not expected until the next day, they are in 
some distress about the smallness of their number— two 
men and one woman. One of the men, however, says that 
he once performed a play alone, acting as king, queen, and 
ambassador in a single scene. Their clothes, too, are an- 
other source of trouble, for the key of the wardrobe is in 
the hands of one of the other party. An official, however, 
solves the matter by giving the actress a robe of his wife's, 
and the coats of two young men who are playing tennis. 
So the play begins, and goes on with some interruptions, 
the young men, who have finished their match, rushing on 
the stage to reclaim their clothes. This matter excites a 
tumult, in which the audience takes part. The story runs 
on, the company is invited out to supper, the actress is 
abducted, and the pursuit of her is what takes up most of 
the rest of the book. There is love-making, too, and a 
comical description of the absurdities of the incongruous 
characters, and much space is devoted to exaggerated 
accounts of their misfortunes. The book contains many 
episodes in the shape of love-stories, the scenes of which 
are laid in Spain. The story, it will be seen, is distinctly 
comic, and the manners of provincials, always despised by 
Parisians, are turned to ridicule.* Another book of the 
same class is Furetiere's " Roman Bourgeois," which de- 
scribes the ridiculous courtship by a counsellor of the 



* Boileau did not like Scarron's travesties, but he had a good word for 
the " Roman Comique," as well as for " Gil Bias," though he despised the 
"Diable Boiteux."— Sainte-Beuve, " Causeries du Lundi," ii. 35Y. 



3o6 English Literature. 

daughter of a rascally attorney. It is more or less a car- 
icature. The greatest of the French stories, and one of 
the greatest of novels, was Le Sage's "Gil Bias" (1 715-35), 
the scene of which is laid in Spain, and the characters 
are Spanish, though the book itself is, in all essentials, 
French. Its dependence on the Spanish novels, even to 
borrowing some of the incidents, has been often noticed. 

Now, at last, we come to the English novel, and this 
long digression will not have been without service if it 
shows, by analogy, how certain it is that the Spanish nov- 
els must have had some influence on English literature. 
Lyly's " Euphues " had died of its own elegance, and its 
few successors, notably Greene's " Dorastus and Fawnia," 
had left no permanent mark. The English novel in no 
way rose from that artificial soil. We have seen that the 
"Lazarillo" was translated into English in 1586, and with 
that book " the Spanish rogue " acquired the right of citi- 
zenship in English letters. Those books had, however, 
formidable rivals in the translations of the Italian novel- 
ists, where so many of the dramatists found their plots, 
and novel-writing w^as less common when the stage was 
crowded with plays, just as now, when novels swarm 
everywhere, plays are rare. Yet there were some imi- 
tations of the Spanish stories. Thomas Nash (1558- 
1600) wrote a novel of a somewhat similar kind — to 
judge from the few pages given in an appendix to one 
of the volumes of Dr. Nott's edition of Surrey's poems — 
called "Jack Wilton."* Another, and possibly a more 
important imitation, was " The English Rogue " (part 1 
by Richard Head [died 16*78], 2, 3, and 4 by Francis Kirk- 
man, two minor dramatists), which was possibly a reac- 
tion against some now forgotten " Amadis " novels, diluted 

* See also Obse)'ver, No, xxxix. 



English Literature. 3^7 

fragments of chivalry, such as " The Famous, Delectable, 
and Pleasant Hystorie of the Renowned Parismus, Prince 
of Bohemia," by Emanuel Ford, London, 1598, which soon 
ran through thirteen editions, one as late as 1732 ; also 
his " Ornatus and Artesia," and Henry Roberts's " Phean- 
der, or the Maiden Knight" (1595) * (not in Allibone ; vide 
Wolff, " Gesch. des Romans," p. 221-22, and Dunlop, ii. 

384). 

"The English Rogue" appeared in 1665, 1668, and 1671 
(two parts). The whole title is " The English Rogue De- 
scribed, in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a Witty Extrava- 



* There had been, too, a great many short popular stories, called novels, 
sometimes merely jest-books (Mark Lemon's, in Golden Treasury Series, 
is the latest of these publications). Such were " Tarleton's Jests" (1611) ; 
"Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele" (1627). Thomas Deloney's 
"Pleasant History of John Winchcomb in his younger yeeres called Jack 
of Newberrie, the famous and worthie clothier of England : declaring his 
life and love, together with his charitable deeds and great hospitality : 
and how he set continually five hundred poore people at worke, to the 
great benefit of the Common-wealth : worthy to be read and regarded," 
licensed 1596, and soon printed, is a curious mixture of novel and jest- 
book. With but a feeble plot, it is scarcely more than a collection of in- 
coherent stories. Thomas Deloney was a great ballad-maker, and. War- 
ton says, one of the original actors of Shakspere's plays. In the preface 
of the "Tinker of Turvey," five or six short stories of faithless wives, the 
writer says a good wife may find it as well worth reading as " Kobin 
Hood," " Clim a the Clough," " Tom Thumb," " Fryer and the Boy," and 
*' Sir Irenbras." Now, such of these as are known are the reading of in- 
fants. "Jack the Giant-killer" is from "Sir Geoffrey of Monmouth." 
" Valentine and Orson " was once a popular story. See, too, Goethe's " Aus 
Meinem Leben" (30 vol. ed., Stuttgart, 1858), p. 30, where he speaks of the 
romances he read when young. May not Scott's novels be gradually sink- 
ing in this way to younger readers ? The change is not in romance alone ; 
A. De Morgan {Mtes and Queries, July 17, 1858) says that boys of eighteen 
now read Newton's " Principia," which not a dozen men in Europe could 
read at its first appearance. 



3o8 English Literature. 

gant. Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent 
Cheats of both Sexes." Motto, 

" Read, but don't Practice : for the Author findes, 
They which live Honest have most quiet mindes." 

The mere title shows that this book is an imitation of the 
picaresque stories ; and, if doubt were possible, it would 
be removed by one of the commendatory poems, by one 
N. D., who says : 

" Guzman, Lazaro, Buscon,* and Francion, 
Till thou appeard'st did'shine as a^ high Noon. 
Thy Book's now extant ; those that judge of Wit, 
Say, They and Rablais too fall short of it. 
How could't be otherwise, since 'twas thy fate, 
To practise what they did but imitate," etc. 

The hero recounts his tricks at considerable length, and 
without a trace of the humor of his Spanish predecessors. 
He was a bad boy at home and at school, and of course 
he ran away, soon joining a band of gypsies, whose cant 
language he describes at some length. He leaves them 
and becomes a professional beggar, until "a tradesman 
of no mean quality, passing by, took a strong fancy to 
me," and carried him home to take him into his service. 
Here he plunges into various excesses, which form an 
incoherent combination of villanies. He leaves England 
and travels in Ireland. Then, "having now gotten a 
round sum of money by me, I borrowed wherever I 
could, so crossing St. George's Channel and landed at 
Chester, I took up my quarters at a very graceful inn, and 
gave out immediately that I had an hundred head of Cat- 
tel coming. The Master of the house, taking notice of 
my extraordinary Garb, and believing the report which I 
had caus'd to be spread abroad, lodg'd me with much re- 

* Buscon is another name for Paul the Sharper. 



English Literature. 309 

spect in one of the best Chambers of his house. The wind 
favoured my design as much as I could desire, for it blew 
East North East, by which no Shipping could come out of 
Ireland. One day I came to my landlord, and telling him 
that by reason of the non-arrival of my Cattel, I was dis- 
appointed of Moneys, and therefore I desired him to lend 
me ten pounds, and he should satisfie himself in the first 
choice of the best of my beasts when they came, and 
swore to him I would perform my promise to him upon 
the word of a Gentleman. So that without any scruple 
he lent me the money. Being Market-Day I bought an 
excellent gelding with Furniture thereunto belonging, 
with Sword and Pistols, and in this Equipage mounted I 
took my leave of my credulous Landlord, without speak- 
ing a word to him," etc. We notice the total lack of \ 
vivacity in this narration, and its enormous inferiority to / 
the Spanish stories. The poor author beats his brain to 
find incidents, but his dreary pen leaves them all heavy. 
The hero served a notable revengeful trick on the turnkey 
of Ludgate, he played a freak upon a jeweller, he put a 
notable cheat upon a gentleman, he cheated a scrivener, 
he was revenged on a broker, he cozened a rich usurer, etc. 
Suddenly he is in Newgate, and (1650) condemned to be 
transported to Virginia ; he is wrecked on the coast of 
Spain, and then starts anew, this time of his own will, for 
the East Indies, but the ship is captured by Turkish pirates, 
and he is sold in the market-place ; he regains his liberty, 
however, and pushes on to the East Indies, where he mar- 
ries a native woman. Here the part written by Head 
comes to an end. Kirkman's continuation begins with 
another man's m'emories of his life and its misdeeds. The 
book is prolonged with the full confessions of a number 
of evil-doers of both sexes. A certain amount of infor- 
mation may be got of the life of the time ; but, though 



310 Engluh Literature. 

the book is of infinitely less literary merit than the French 
and Spanish stories, the vulgar tale shows the effect that 
the picaresque novels had. 

While "The English Rogue" belongs to a low depart- 
ment of literature, what strikes any one who reads it is its 
resemblance to Defoe's secondary novels, as Lamb called 
them. It is true that these stories are floated by the " Rob- 
inson Crusoe ;" if that novel had never been written, we 
should know but little of " Colonel Jack," " Roxana," and 
" Captain Singleton." Fortunately, however, they survive, 
and we can trace the foundations of the English novel in 
them as in " The English Rogue," although these founda- 
tions were laid in miry places. Defoe had from nature 
what he calls his " natural infirmity of homely, plain writ- 
ing," but he did not invent — although he often gets the 
credit for it — the art of writing about the lives of vicious 
people. In his volume on Defoe, in the " English Men of 
Letters Series," for instance, Mr. Minto says : *' Defoe is 
spoken of as the inventor of the realistic novel ; realistic 
biography would, perhaps, be a more strictly accurate de- 
scription." In fact, Defoe invented neither; he found the 
realistic biographical novel already made, and he adapted 
the form to his own ends. He did this with great skill, 
for while he was not a great artist, he was a wonderful 
craftsman. That is to say, he studies his fellow-creatures 
from the point of view of their relations to society ; he 
writes as a reformer with a direct practical end, with the 
end that was foremost in the minds of his generation, that 
of promoting civilization. Take his "Robinson Crusoe," 
for example ; full as it is of fine things, as when Robinson 
sees with terror the print of a human foot upon the sand, 
it is singularly devoid of any expression of the feeling of 
vast loneliness that would weigh down on the spirit of 
any such hero in a novel of the present day. The prob- 



English Literature. 3 1 1 

lem that lay before him, and which he accomplished, was 
how to make himself over from a worthless person into a 
peaceable, God-fearing citizen. The shadow of the mu- 
nicipal law and of the English Sunday seems to lie over 
the lonely island. The moral of the book, in short, is this : 
If a man in solitude, with a few scraps from a wreck and 
an occasional savage, dog, and cat to help him, can lead so 
civilized a life, what may we not expect of good people in 
England with abundance about them ? This moral is what 
now makes the value of the book as a means of education 
for boys, that they may see, as Kousseau put it, that the 
stock of an ironmonger is better than that of a jeweller, 
and glass better than diamonds.* Indeed, the whole book 
appeals to a boy's imagination by its continual reference 
to practical difficulties and by the absence of a larger 
imagination. Of the influence of this book it is hardly 
necessary to speak, for its position as a classic for boys is 
still firm. It appeared in 1719, and was soon followed 
by many English imitations, one of which was the " Life 
and Adventures of Peter Wilkins " (1750), by Kobert 
Paltock, but it had a much larger following abroad. A 
French translation appeared in 1720-21 ; in 1720 it was put 
into German and soon into Italian. Everywhere the book 
was much admired, but nowhere so much as in Germany. 
By 1760 forty "Robinsonaden," as they were called, were 
published, including a German (1722), an Italian (1722), 
a " Schlesischer Robinson," and one of almost every coun- 
try ; the clerical "Robinson" (1723); a medical, a Jew- 
ish, a moral, a learned, a poetic " Robinson ;" the " Girl 
Robinson;" "Robinson, the Bookseller;" an "Invisible 
Robinson," etc. Twenty-one more, indeed, appeared af- 
ter 1760, exclusive of those written solely for children, the 

♦ " Emile," liv. iii. 



312 English Literature. 

best known of which is Campe's " Swiss Family Robin- 
son," who, it will be remembered, land in wash-tubs nailed 
together between planks — a device which throws consider- 
able light on a German's notion of the ocean in a storm. 

It is Defoe's other novels that had more influence on 
English literature, or at least inclined more towards the 
direction which Eng-lish literature was to follow. In his 
"Colonel Jack" (1722), for instance, we are once more 
in the line between the picaresque novel and the English 
novel made up of the study of character and the combina- 
tion of incident. The hero tells in autobiographical form 
the story of his life, and it is impossible to pass by his chron- 
icle without quoting a few lines to show of how good ma- 
terial the book is made. The hero, who has gentle blood 
in his veins, is brought uj? amid thieves and pickpockets, 
whose arts he has soon learned to practise. The moral 
agnosticism of the poor fellow, who was brought up to 
believe the picking of pockets a legitimate business, like 
anything else, is well given ; he has no struggle with his 
conscience, he simply does as he is bid, although when 
older he regrets that his victims suffer the agony of losing 
large sums. At one time he returns a stolen pocket-book 
for the sake of the reward. The gentleman becomes in- 
terested in him, and talks with him thus : 

" ' What is your name ?' says he — ' But hold, I forgot,' said he; ' I prom- 
ised I would not ask your name, so you need not tell me.' 
" ' My name is Jack,' said I. 
" ' Why, have you no surname ?' said he. 
" ' What is that ?' said I. 

" ' You have some other name besides Jack,' says he, ' han't you ?' 
" ' Yes,' says I ; ' they call me Colonel Jack.' 
" ' But have you no other name ?' 
"'No,' said I. 

" ' How come you to be called Colonel Jack, pray ?' 
" ' They say,' said I, ' that my father's name was Colonel.' 



English Literature. 313 

" ' Is your father or mother alive ?' said he. 

" 'No,' said I, ' my father is dead.' 

" ' Where is your mother, then ?' said he. 

" ' I never had e'er a mother,' said I. 

" This made him laugh. ' What,' said he, ' had you never a mother ; 
what then ?' 

" ' I had a nurse,' said I, ' but she was not my mother.' 

" ' Well,' says he to the gentleman, ' I dare say this boy was not the 
thief that stole your bills.' 

" ' Indeed, sir, I did not steal them,' said I, and cried again. 

" ' No, no, child,' said he, ' we don't believe you did. This is a clever 
boy,' says he to the other gentleman, ' and yet very ignorant and honest ; 
'tis pity some care should not be taken of him, and something done for 
him; let us talk a little more with him.' So they sat down and drank 
wine, and gave me some, and then the first gentleman talked to me again. 

" ' Well,' said he, ' what wilt thou do with this money now thou hast it V 

" ' I don't know,' said I. 

" ' Where will you put it ?' said he. 

" ' In my pocket,' said I. 

" * In your pocket,' said he ; 'is your pocket whole ? sha'n't j'ou lose it ?' 

" ' Yes,' said I, ' my pocket is whole.' 

" ' And where will you put it when you come home ?' 

" 'I have no home,' said I, and cried again. 

" ' Poor child !' said he ; ' then what dost thou do for thy living V 

" ' I go of errands,' said I, ' for the folks in Rosemary-lane.' 

" ' And what dost thou do for a lodging at night f 

" ' I lie at the glass-house,' said I, ' at night.' 

" ' How, lie at the glass-house ! have they any beds there ?' said he. 

" ' I never lay in a bed in my life,' said I, ' as I remember.' 

" ' Why,' says he, ' what do you lie on at the glass-house ?' 

'* ' The ground,' says I, ' and sometimes a little straw, or upon the warm 
ashes,' " etc. 

Here Defoe describes one of the performances of a 
young rascal : 

" How he did to whip away such a bag of money from any man that 
was awake and in his senses, I cannot tell ; but there was a great deal in 
it, and among it a paper full by itself. When the paper dropt out of the 
bag, ' Hold,' says he, ' that is gold !' and began to crow and hollow like a 
mad boy. But there he was baulked, for it was a paper of old thirteen- 

14 



314 English Literature. 

pence halfpenny pieces, half and quarter pieces, with ninepences, and fonr- 
pence halfpennies — all old crooked money — Scotch and Irish coin ; so he 
was disappointed in that: but as it was, there was about £17 or £18 in 
the bag, as I understood by him ; for I could not tell money, not I." 

These inadequate quotations must suffice to show the 
similarity in the subjects between the Spanish picaresque 
stories and Defoe's novels ; they bear, too, a striking re- 
semblance to some of the scenes in Grimmelshausen's 
" Simplicissimus." * And "Colonel Jack" is not the only 

* For example, Erstes Buch, Capitel 8 : 

" Einsiedel. Wie heissestu ? 

" Shnplicius. Ich heisse Bub. 

" Eins. Ich sihe wohl, dass du kein Magdlein bist ; wie hat dich aber 
dein Vater und Mutter gei"ufen ? 

" Simp. Ich habe keinen Vater oder Mutter gehabt. 

" EinH. Wer hat dir dann das Hemd geben ? 

" Simp. Ei, mein Meuder. 

" Eins. Wie heisset dich dann dein Meuder ? 

'•^ Simp. Sie hat mich Bub geheissen,auch Schelm, ungeschickter Tolpel 
und Galgenvogel. 

" Eins. Wer ist dann deiner Mutter Mann gewest ? 

" Simp. Niemand. 

" Eh\s. Bei wem hat dann dein Meuder des Nachts geschlaf en ? 

" Simp. Bei meinem Knan. 

" Eins. Wie hat dich dann dein Knan geheissen ? 

" Simp. Er hat mich auch Bub genennet. 

" Eins. Wie hiesse aber dein Knan ? 

" Simp. Er heisst Knan. 

" Mns. Wie hat ihn aber dein Meuder gerufen ? 

" Simp. Knan und auch Meister. 

" Eins. Hat sie ihn niemals anders genennet ? 

" Simp. Ja, sie hat. 

" Eins. Wie dann ? 

" Simp. Riilp, grober Bengel, voile Sau und noch wol anders, wann sie 

haderte. 

''Elm. Du bist wol ein unwissender Tropf, dass du weder deiner Eltern 
noch dcinen eignen Namen nicht weist ! 



English Literature. 315 

example ; the " Memoirs of a Cavalier," which Dr. John- 
son thought genuine, the " Captain Singleton," and I may 
even include the "History of the Plague," which has to 
be shown up every few years for an imaginary account, 
and the " Moll Flanders " and " Roxana " — all the genuine 
novels of this list describe vicious characters and advent- 
urous careers. As in the Spanish novels, the most strik- 
ing thing is the picturesque setting ; the novels, indeed, 
are like some of the modern French pictures — the French 
novels are mainly satirical, and Defoe's contain practical 
morality. He always teaches a lesson. We have seen 
how he did this even in his " Kobinson Crusoe." One of 
the few exceptions is when, after the Spanish ship was 
wrecked with all on board, Robinson says : " Such were 
these earnest wishings, ' That but one man had been 
saved ! O that it had been but one !' I believe I repeat- 
ed the words, 'O that it had been but one !' a thousand 
times ; and my desires were so moved by it that when I 
spoke the words, my hands would clinch together, and my 
fingers press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any 
soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involun- 
tarily ; and my teeth in my head would strike together, 
and set against one another so strong, that for some time 
I could not part them again." And, chap. viii. : "Before, 
as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing 
the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would 
break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would 
die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the 
deserts I was in ; and how I was a prisoner, locked up 
with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an unin- 

" Simp. Eia, weist dus doch auch nicht. 
" Eins. Kanstu auch beten ? 

" Simp. Nain, unser Ann, und mein Mender liaben als das Bett ge- 
macht." 



3i6 Eixglish LiUrature. 

habited wilderness without redemption. In the midst of 
the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out 
upon me like a storm, and made me wring my hands, and 
weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the 
middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down 
and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two 
together, and this was still worse to me ; for if I could 
burst out into tears, or vent myself by words, it would 
go off ; and the grief, having exhausted itself, would 
abate." 

These passages show that Defoe was by no means in- 
sensible to the romantic interest of the situation he de- 
scribed with such great skill, but in general he confined 
himself, as we all know, to the description of facts. His 
homely narratives — that is, all his stories except " Robin- 
son Crusoe " — have always belonged to the lower stratum 
of literature, but the Spirit that inspired them has never 
become wholly extinct. He, to be sure, limited him- 
self to a sordid method, to the dexterous adaptation, as 
Mr. Minto says, of means to ends ; but his unwearying 
realism is still one of the main forces in the English 
novel. 

While it is only the " Robinson Crusoe " that floats 
Defoe's other novels, this stands outside of the regular 
progress of the fiction of England, which soon grew fa- 
mous in the hands of Richardson. We all know how this 
peaceful printer, at the age of fifty-one, suddenly burst 
into authorship, and became one of the most famous 
writers of his time. His own account of this step is well 
worth consideration, especially because at first sight it 
seems to show that his treatment of the novel was 
wholly fortuitous, and in no way dependent upon what 
his predecessors had accomplished. In a letter to Aaron 
Hill, he said that the foundation of the storv of " Pa- 



English Literature. 1^7 

mela " * in which the heroine withstands the solicita- 
tions of her master, and finally induces him to marry 
her, was an anecdote which he had heard some twenty- 
five years earlier. The way in which he happened to 
write it was this : " Mr. Rivington and Mr. Osborne, 
whose names are on the title-page, had long been urging 
me to give them a little book (which, they said, they 
were often asked after) of familiar letters on the use- 
ful concerns in common life ; and, at last, I yielded to 
their importunity, and began to recollect such subjects 
as I thought would be useful in such a design, and formed 
several letters accordingly. And, among the rest, I thought 
of giving one or two as cautions to young folks circum- 
stanced as Pamela was. Little did I think, at first, of 
making one, much less two volumes of it. But, when I 
began to recollect what had, so many years before, been 
told me by my friend, I thought the story, if written in an 
easy and natural manner, suitable to the simplicity of it, 

* Pamela, it is often pronounced now, although Richardson doubtless 
said Pamela. Thus in an introductory poem we find, " Sweet Pamela, for 
ever blooming maid." And in the verses the heroine writes to her fellow- 
servants : 

" My fellow-servants dear, attend 
To these few lines which I have penned ; 
I'm sure they are from your honest friend 
And wisher- well, poor Pamela." 

Pope, however, "To Miss Blount, with works of Voiture," has 
" The gods to curse Pamela with her praj'ers." 

Fielding says ("Joseph Andrews," bk. iv. chap, xii.): "They had a 
daughter ''of a very strange name, Pamela or Pamela ; some pronounced it 
one way, and some the other." 

In "A Remedy for Love," Sidney has 

" Philoclea and Pamela sweet. 
By chance in one great house did meet." 



3i8 English Literature. 

might possibly introduce a new species of writing, that 
might possibly turn young people into a course of reading 
different from the pomp and parade of romance-writing, 
and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which 
novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause 
of religion and virtue, I therefore gave way to enlarge- 
ment ; and so Pamela became as you see her. But so lit- 
tle did I hope for the approbation of judges, that I had not 
the courage to send the two volumes to your ladies, until 
I found the books well received by the public. 

" While I was writing the two volumes, my worthy- 
hearted wife, and the young lady who is with us, when I 
had read them some part of the story, which I had begun 
without their knowing it, used to come into my little 
closet every night, with — ' Have you any more of Pamela, 
Mr. Richardson ?' ' We are come to hear a little more of 
Pamela,' etc. This encouraged me to prosecute it, which 
I did so diligently, through all my other business, that, by 
a memorandum on my copy, I began it Nov. 10, 1739, and 
finished it Jan. 10, 1739-40." 

If any book seems to have been written independently 
it was this. Yet it is important to notice that, by his own 
confession, he was desirous of writing something " that 
might possibly turn young people into a course of reading 
different from the pomp and parade of romance - writing, 
and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which 
novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause 
of religion and virtue." We find him, then, obeying the 
spirit of his time by reacting against the decaying roman- 
tic novels, the heroic romances which were in the lady's 
library mentioned by the Spectator^ and following the bent 
of part of his contemporaries by teaching the importance 
of virtue. To Richardson the heroic romances seemed 
absurd and exaggerated. He was tired of the lovesick 



English Literature. 319 

emperors of imaginary countries and the fantastic prin- 
cesses, and determined to show what were the dangers 
really surrounding human beings ; and he took the only 
means in his power of doing this. He described life as he 
knew it. Defoe, there can be no doubt, struck a lower 
class of readers, and indeed, even now, when, naturally 
enough, there is a strong tendency to admire any work in 
the past that seems animated by the modern spirit, his 
novels are simply the reading of the curious. If further 
proof is needed of Richardson's dependence on laws 
stronger than any man's whim, it may be found in the 
fact that there were, as Erich Schmidt says, Richardsoni- 
ans before Richardson, The most celebrated of those was 
Marivaux (1688-1763), who published a French Spectator 
in 1722, and in 1731 published his novel "Marianne," 
which he left unfinished — the completion being added by 
Mme. Riccoboni, a few years later.* 

This story is very much like those of Richardson. The 
heroine loses her parents at an early age, and is taken care 
of by the cure of the village near by until her sixteenth 
year, when his sister is called to Paris to attend a relative 
at the point of death. She takes Marianne with her — 
who recounts her own adventures — to find her some em- 
ployment. But the cure's sister is taken ill and dies ; the 
cure himself falls into a state of imbecility and has spent 
all his money, so that Marianne could not think of return- 
ing to him. She turns for succor to a monk to whom 
her friend had recommended her on her death-bed. She 
is intrusted to a man with a fine reputation for benevo- 

* There is no ground for affirming that Richardson had read it. Field- 
ing had, however. In " Joseph Andrews " (1742), bk. iii. chap, i., he says : 
*'The same mistakes may be found in Scarron, the 'Arabian Nights,' the 
'■ History of Marianne,' and ' Le Paisan Parvenu.' " Of the " Paysan Par- 
venu" a translation appeared in 1735. 



320 English Literature. 

lence, who is, however, a monster of hypocrisy. After 
some harrowing scenes with this infamous persecutor, one 
day, on her way home from mass, she sprains her ankle, 
and is carried to the house of a M. Valville, who, it is un- 
necessary to add after saying that the heroine had sprained 
her ankle, falls at once madly in love with her. This 
young gentleman is the nephew of the unvenerable villain 
who assumes to be her protector, and there is much mis- 
understanding between the two gentlemen concerning 
each other's intentions. Marianne finds refuge in a con- 
vent, where a benevolent lady, who overhears her story, 
establishes her. This benevolent lady soon confides to 
Marianne that she is in much distress because her son has 
just refused an advantageous marriage on account of his 
attachment for a young girl who had been carried into 
her house after a slight accident. Marianne confesses that 
she is the person, but, while she declares that she returns 
his affection, she promises to do all in her power to deter 
him from such an unequal alliance. Valville, how^ever, 
does not agree to this, and his mother consents to the mar- 
riage. All seems happily concluded, when Marianne is 
reduced to despair by learning that Valville has fallen 
madly in love with another woman, and Marivaux's part 
of the story concludes with a nun's recital of her own woes, 
with the purpose of distracting Marianne from the con- 
templation of her own sufferings. The continuation puts 
an end to the long episode about the nun, and narrates 
how the woman with whom Valville is in love is an un- 
worthy intriguer. He means to elope with her to Eng- 
land, but is prevented and put in the Bastile. An officer 
falls in love with Marianne, but she, at any rate, is con- 
stant and refuses him. Valville is taken sick, and Mari- 
anne hastens to the Bastile to nurse him. He repents 
his errors and renews his attachment ; it is discovered 



English Liter atui^e. 321 

that she belongs to a very noble family, and they at last 
marry happily. 

The main idea of this novel is the same as that of 
Richardson's " Pamela," that virtue and honesty triumph 
over all persecutions ; but in Marivaux's novel the up- 
rightness is of a higher kind than Pamela's rigid, calcu- 
lating, bargaining virtue. Marianne is a loving person 
who is willing to sacrifice herself and never see her 
lover if she stands in the way of his prosperity ; Pa- 
mela is simply looking out for her own advantage. In 
spite of this difference between the two books, they are 
sufficiently alike in intention and in choice of subject. 
They show how similar causes produce similar results. 
Yet this novel had no imitators in France, where a few 
years later Richardson was hailed with warmth as the 
founder of a new school. 

In France, too, I may say here, there had been an earlier 
reaction against the heroic novel, in Mme. de La Fayette's 
story, "La Princesse de Cleves," a calm narrative of so- 
cial complication, as different as possible from the heroic 
novels, with their pompous, inflated love-making. Yet the 
most complete modification appeared in England ; the 
" Princesse de Cleves " belonged to a more refined society 
than that of England, and Lee's play of that name (1681) 
was a base travesty of a beautiful novel. The reaction 
that appeared in England was characteristic of that coun- 
try because made up of the elements that existed there. 
As I have said, the middle class was more important 
because more powerful there than anywhere, and as it 
grew into prominence it became impatient of the aris- 
tocratic literature which was fashionable, and the new 
novel became a study of the middle classes. Its moral 
turn was that which was popular with these people. It 
recalls that of the Sjoectator, just as the incidents are like 



322 English Literature. 

the brief sketches which Addison and Steele were fond 
of writing. The picaresque novels, it need scarcely be 
said, had no influence on Richardson, though we shall soon 
see them again inspiring other writers. He was simply 
giving human interest to fiction which for a long time had 
been occupied with the intrigues of aristocrats. Mari- 
vaux's novel was almost an accidental occurrence, though 
the result of similar causes, while Richardson founded a 
school. Princes and princesses had to give way to human 
beings, when royal authority could be made by act of 
parliament, and naturally curiosity was diverted to those 
who had the power which was expressed by the parlia- 
ment. In England, too, the great change from feudalism 
to the modern industrial society was completed, and natu- 
rally the novel which pictured this society was written 
there. 



English Literature. 323 



CHAPTER yill. 

I. The stage, too, had taken notice of the change. We 
have seen how artificial was Addison's " Cato," yet it 
set a literary fashion. If even Addison, whose taste was 
so much above that of his contemporaries, could write 
that cold tragedy, need we wonder that Thomson, who 
drew inspirations for his poems from Milton and Spen- 
ser, should have written a severely classical tragedy? 
One line of it ran, " Oh ! Sophonisba ; Sophonisba, oh !" 
which some one in the pit turned to ridicule by shouting 
out, " Oh ! Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, oh !" and 
which Fielding again laughed at in his *' Tragedy of 
Tragedies ; or, the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the 
Great" (1730-31), in the line, " Oh ! Huncamunca, Hun- 
camunca, oh !" This burlesque of Fielding's is not un- 
amusing. It is prefaced with a long essay, with mock 
references to Aristotle and Horace, and there are notes 
containing extracts from the tragedians who are most 
frequently parodied, and caricatures of the pompous 
critics. Thus, " Act i. sc. i., the Palace ; Doodle^ Noodle : 

" Doodle. Sure such a day as this was never seen ! 
The sun himself, on this auspicious day, 
Shines like a beau in a new birthday suit : 
This down the seams embroidered, that the beams. 
All nature wears one universal grin. 

" Note. — Corneille recommends some very remarkable day wherein to 
fix the action of a tragedy. This the best of our tragical writers have 



324 Knglisli Literature. 

understood to mean a day remarkable for the serenity of the sky, or what 
we generally call a fine summer's day : so that, according to this exposi- 
tion, the same months are proper for tragedy which are proper for pastoral. 
Most of our celebrated English tragedies, as Cato, Marianme, Tamerlane, 
etc., begin with these observations on the morning. Lee seems to have 
come the nearest to this beautiful description of our author's." 

And then he quotes from Lee's tragedies some of his pas- 
sages of this sort : 

" The sun, too, seems 
As conscious of my joy, with broader eye 
To look abroad the world, and all things smile 
Like Sophonisba." 

Noodle replies : 

" This day, Mr. Doodle, is a day. 
Indeed ! — A day we never saw before, 
The mighty Thomas Thumb victorious comes ; 

"Note. — Dr. B — y reads, The mighty Tall-mast Thumb. Mr. D — s, 
The mighty Thumbing Thumb. Mr. T — d reads. Thundering. I think 
Thomas more agreeable to the great simplicity so apparent in our author," 

Scene IL 
" King. Let nothing but a face of joy appear ; 
The man who frowns this day shall lose his head, 
That he may have no face to frown withal. 
Smile Dollallolla — Ha ! what wrinkled sorrow 
Hangs, sits, lies, frowns upon thy knitted brow ?" 

And in a note on this last line we find : 

" Repentance /roif>/i.9. on thy contracted brow." — Soph. 

" Hung on his clouded brow, I mark'd despair." — Ibid. 

" A sullen gloom 
Scowls on his brow." — Busiris. 

Here again is a parody of a sufficiently common fault of 
the tragedians. The ghost of Tom Thumb's father ap- 
pears to King Arthur, and says : 

" Oh ! then prepare to hear — what but to hear 
Is full enough to send thy spirit hence. 



English Literature. 325 

Thy subjects up in arms, by Grizzle led, 
Will, ere the rosy-fingered morn shall ope 
The shutters of the sky, before the gate 
Of this thy royal palace, swarming spread. 
So have I seen the bees in clusters swarm, 
So have I seen the stars in frosty nights, 
So have I seen the sand in windy days. 
So have I seen the ghosts on Pluto's shore, 
So have I seen the flowers in spring arise, 
So have I seen the leaves in autumn fall. 
So have I seen the fruits in summer smile, 
So have I seen the snow in winter frown. 

" King. Damn all thou hast seen ! Dost thou beneath the shape 
Of Gaffer Thumb, come hither to abuse me 
With similes, to keep me on the rack ? 
Hence — or by all the torments of thy hell, 
I'll run thee through the body, though thou'st none, 

" Ghost. Arthur, beware ! I must this moment hence, 
Not frighted by your voice, but by the cock's ! 
Arthur, beware ! beware ! beware ! beware ! 
Strive to avert thy yet impending fate ; 
For if thou'rt killed to-day. 
To-morrow all thy care will come too late." 

And when Noodle comes to announce that Tom Thumb 
has been swallowed by " a cow, of larger than the usual 
size," he enters the scene with these words : 

" Oh ! monstrous, dreadful, terrible, oh ! oh ! 
Deaf be my ears, forever blind my eyes ! 
Dumb be my tongue ! feet lame ! all senses lost ! 
Howl, wolves ; grunt, bears ; hiss, snakes ; shriek all ye ghosts ! 

"Note. — These beautiful phrases are all to be found in one sinole 
speech of King Arthur^ or the British Worthy. 

" Chrononhotonthologos," produced in 1734, is another 
mock tragedy, by Henry Carey, author of " Sally in Our 
Alley." This "most Tragical Tragedy that ever was 
Tragedized by any Company of Tragedians" begins in 
an antechamber of the palace, where Rigdum Funidos 



326 English Literature. 

learns that the King is asleep. The King, on awakening, 
threatens to banish Somnus from his dominions. There 
is to be eternal pantomime to keep mankind from sleep. 
In the midst of the pantomime a guard cries : 

*' To arms ! to arms ! great Chrononhotonthologos ! 
Th' antipodean powers from realms below 
Have burst the solid entrails of the earth ; 
Gushing such cataracts of forces forth 
The world is too incopious to contain 'em." 

Chrononhotonthologos takes the King of the Antipodes, 
who walks with his head where his feet should be. The 
King is invited to take some wine in the tent of his gen- 
eral, Bombardinion ; he assents, and expresses a desire for 
something to eat. Bombardinion to the cook : 

" See that the table constantly be spread 
With all that Art and Nature can produce. 
Traverse from pole to pole ; sail round the globe ; 
Bring every eatable that can be eat : 
The king shall eat tho' all mankind be starved." 

A quarrel arises. The King kills the cook and strikes his 
general : 

" Bomhardinion. A blow ! Shall Bombardinion take a blow ? 
Blush, blush, thou sun ! Start back then rapid ocean ! 
Hill, vales, seas, mountains ! All commixing crumble, 
And into Chaos pulverize the world ; 
For Bombardinion has received a blow, 
And Chrononhotonthologos shall die." 

And he kills him. A physician is brought, who says : 

" My lord, he's far beyond the power of physic ; 
His soul has left his body and this world. 

" Bombardinion. Then go to 'tother world and fetch it back. 
And if I find thou triflest with me there, \^KilU him. 

I'll chase thy shade thro' myriads of orbs. 
And drive thee far beyond the verge of nature. 



English Literature. 327 

Ha ! call'st thou, Chrouonhotonthologos ? 

I come ! youv faithful Bombardinion comes ! 

He comes in worlds unknown to make new wars, 

And gain thee empires num'rous as the stars." \Kill8 himself. 

These two pieces were the destructive part of the new 
feeling, and this found further expression in George Lil- 
lo's (1693-1739) tragedy, "The London Merchant, or the 
History of George Barnwell," which was brought out in 
1731, ten years before Richardson's "Pamela" was pub- 
lished. It marks in the history of the stage the same 
change which Richardson introduced into the novel. Yet 
the comparison must not be carried too far ; they agree 
in the most devoted respect for morality, but in art poor 
Lillo is the merest bungler, and by the side of Richardson 
he makes but a poor show. 

The play itself was what the Germans call epoch-mak- 
ing ; first, because it was written in prose, and secondly, 
because of the plot, which was taken from an old ballad,* 
that "of ' George Barnwell,' an apprentice of London, who 
thrice robbed his master, and murdered his uncle in Lud- 
low," thus bringing a citizen on the stage as hero. The 
plot is, briefly, the story of the young apprentice, who gets 
into bad company, and to stealing money, and murder, so 
that the last scene is the place of execution, " The gal- 
lows and ladders at the further end of the stage." To us 
this seems a sufficiently common plot, yet, at the time it 

* "A Yorkshire Tragedy" (1608) is sometimes mentioned as an early 
play with the modern spirit, but it must be remembered that it was written 
long before the heroic drama existed. Not even in France were there 
rules at that time. It was a dramatization of a story told in a ballad. 

John Home's " Douglas " (1756) was founded on the ballad of " Gil 
Morrice." The play keeps close to the unities. Of Lillo's other plays, 
"Fatal Curiosity" (1737) observes the unities; "Arden of Feversham " 
does not. 



328 English Literature. 

was produced, the fact that the play had nothing to do 
with kings and heroes was enough to make it the object 
of very genuine curiosity. " The witlings," we are told, 
called it " a Newgate Tragedy," and even proposed to re- 
ceive it with scorn, but they were overcome by its pathos 
and disarmed of their ill-will. The prologue, by Mr. Gib- 
ber, Jun., was an ingenious petition for a kind hearing : 

" The Tragic Muse, sublime, delights to show 
Princes distrust, and scenes of royal woe ; 
In awful pomp, majestic, to relate 
The fall of nations, or some hero's fate. 

Upon our stage indeed, with wish'd success. 

You've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress; 

Great only in distress. When she complains 

In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains, 

The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye, 

The absent pomp, with brighter gems, supply. 

Forgive us then, if we attempt to show, 

In artless strains, a tale of private- woe. 

A London 'Prentice ruined is our theme, 

Drawn from the fam'd old song that bears his name. 

We hope your taste is not so high to scorn 

A moral tale, esteem'd e'er you wei'e born. 
* * * * * 

Though art be wanting, and our numbers fail, 

Indulge the attempt in justice to the tale." 

Fully to understand the importance of this play in 
the history of literature, we must recall the extremely 
artificial nature of the heroic drama, with its unities, and 
the necessity that was imposed on it of concerning itself 
only with princes and heroes.* We have seen how the 

* As Kuno Fischer has well condensed it, the stage had modelled itself 
on society with its rigid distinctions of rank. Princes and heroes belonged 
to tragedy ; the middle class to comedy, peasants to the pastorals. See 
his " Lessing als Reformator der deutschen Sprache" (Stuttgart: Cotta, 
p. '73). 



English Literature, 329 

dramatists groaned under their self-imposed chains, how 
Corneille entreated in vain for thirty hours, and sug- 
gested that it was possible to take an interest in the fate 
of common people. What Corneille had said in 1651 
Lillo repeats in the prefatory letter to this play : " If 
Princes, &c., were alone liable to misfortunes, arising from 
vice, or weakness in themselves, or others, there would be 
good reason for confining the characters in tragedy to 
those of superior rank ; but, since the contrary is evident, 
nothing can be more reasonable than to proportion the 
remedy to the disease. I am far from denying that trage- 
dies, founded on any instructive and extraordinary events 
in History, or well-invented Fable, when the persons intro- 
duced are of the highest rank, are without their use, even 
to the bulk of their audience. . ^ . I have attempted, in- 
deed, to enlarge the province of the graver kind of poe- 
try, and should be glad to see it carried on by some abler 
hand." 

Still, the success of the play settled the question whether 
or not the novelty was justifiable, although it, of course, 
did not put an end to all cavilling. One of the comments 
upon it, in the old edition, is ascribed to a " Living Au- 
thoress," who says, with a certain scorn, " Mr. Lillo being 
a tradesman, was perhaps thereby influenced to describe 
scenes in humble life ; beyond which his knowledge could 
only exist in theory" — although it would be fair to ask how 
much the ordinary writers of tragedies knew of Eastern 
emperors, and whether the heroic plays were bits of heroic 
autobiography. "... Though not founded on the dis- 
tresses of the great, yet Colly Cibber eagerly received this 
Pathetic Drama, which was soon patronized by the Mer- 
cantile Interest, and after its first run of twenty successive 
nights in the summer, was also frequently represented to 
crowded houses during the following winter. 



330 ' English Literature. 

" Mr. Pope allowed that the Fable was well conducted ; 
the Language natural, and if sometimes elevated above 
the simplicity of the characters, yet it never was mean, 
nor deviated from propriety of style calculated to affect 
the heart." 

Yet it is a most wretched play ; to the last degree 
stilted, with a sort of melodramatic tremolo running 
through it.* For instance, take the speech of Mr. Thorow- 
good, in answer to the good Mr. Trueman, who has re- 
marked that, according to his observation, 

'* those countries, where trade is promoted and encouraged, do not make 
discoveries to destroy, but to improve mankind, by love and friendship ; 
to tame the fierce and polish the most savage," etc. 

'■'• Thorowgood. 'Tis justly observed: the populous east, luxuriant, abounds 
with glittering gems, bright pearls, aromatick spices, and health-restoring 
drugs : The late-found western world glows with unnumbered veins of 
gold and silver ore. On evei-y climate and on every country, heaven has 
bestowed some good peculiar to itself. It is the industrious merchant's 
business to collect the various blessings of each soil and climate, to enrich 
his native country. — Well ! I have examined your accounts : they are not 
only just, as I have always found them, but regularly kept, and fairly 
entered. I commend your diligence. Method in business is the surest 
guide. He who neglects it, frequently stumbles, and always wanders per- 
plexed, uncertain, and in danger. Are Barnwell's accounts ready for my 
inspection ; he does not use to be the last on these occasions." 

Or this, when Barnwell is about to murder his uncle : 

" Murder my uncle ! Yonder limpid stream, whose hoary fall has made a 

* His prose, which is, rather, a tremulous blank verse, resembles some 
that we find in Dryden's plays, and, indeed, held its ground down to an 
undetermined period in this century. Dryden, for instance, has (" Am- 
boyna," iii. 1): "Dead with grief; with these two hands I scratch'd him 
out a grave; on which I placed a cross, and every day wept o'er the 
ground where all my Joys lay bury'd. The manner of my Life who can 
express ! The Fountain Water was my only Drink, the crabbed Juice and 
Rind of half-ripe Lemmons my only Food, except some Roots ; my House 
the widow'd Cave of some wild Beast," etc. 



English Literature. 331 

natural cascade, as 1 pass'd by, in doleful accents seem'd to murmur, 
murder. The earth, the air, and water, seem'd concerned ; but that's not 
strange," etc. 

Then the uncle appears, his imagination "fill'd with 
ghastly forms of dreary graves, and bodies changed by 

death," etc. 

" \Enter George Barnwell at a distance.] 
" death, thou strange mysterious power, seen every day, yet never 
understood, but by the uncommunicative dead, what art thou ?" etc. 

When he gets to the end of his sentence, Barnwell 
rushes forward and stabs him; he falls wishing bless- 
ings on 

" My dearest nephew ; forgive my murderer, and take my fleeting soul to 
endless mercy." * 

" Barnwell. Expiring saint ! murder'd, martyr'd uncle !" etc. 

The heroic language survived in the following passages, 
and doubtless helped to redeem the play in the eyes of its 
critics : 

" Maria. Why are your streaming eyes still fixed below, as though 
thou'dst give the greedy earth thy sorrows, and rob me of my due ? Were 
happiness within your power, you should bestow it where you pleased ; 
but in your misery I must and will partake. 

" Barnwell. Oh ! say not so, but fly, abhor, and leave me to my fate. Con- 
sider what you are : how vast your fortune, and how bright your fame : 
have pity on your youth, your beauty, and unequalled virtue, for which so 
many noble peers have sighed in vain. Bless with your charms some 
honourable lord. Adorn with your beautv, and by your example improve, 
the English court, that justly claims your merit ; and so shall I quickly be 
to you as though I had never been. 

******** 

" Barnwell. Ere I knew guilt or shame, when fortune smiled, and when 



* In the ballad, this incident is more curtly narrated : 

" Sudden within a wood, 

He struck his uncle down. 
And beat his brains out of his head ; 

So sore he crackt his crown." — Percy's "Reliques." 



332 English Literature. 

my youthful hopes were at the highest ; if then to have raised my thoughts 
to you, had been presumption in me never to have been pardoned, think 
how much beneath yourself you condescend to regard me now. 

" Maria. Let her blush who, professing love, invades the freedom of 
your sex's choice, and meanly sues in hopes of a return. Your inevitable 
fate hath rendered hope impossible as vain. Then why should I fear to 
avow a passion so just and so disinterested ? 

******** 

" Barnwell. So the aromatic spices of the East, which all the living covet 
and esteem, are with unavailing kindness wasted on the dead." 

It will be seen that a thrifty tradesman was lost in George 
Barnwell. The earnest moral aim of the play fell in with 
the popular spirit, but its main importance was that it in- 
troduced a hero from private life.* Otway, to be sure, had 
done this, for no man is ever the first to do anything, but 
Lillo went lower, and selected an apprentice of London, 
who is a much less romantic person than a Venetian con- 
spirator. The moral tendency had been shown by South- 
ern, Howe, and Addison — the same moral tendency that 
inspired the Spectator ; Lillo not only enforced that, but 
he opened the stage to contemporary interests. Lillo 
continued in the same path which he had had the good 
fortune to open ; he wrote his " Fatal Curiosity," which 
Fielding brought out in lYSG, writing a prologue for it 
which contained these lines : 

" No fustian hero rages here to-night ; 
No armies fall to fix a tyrant's right : 



* In his " Reflexions Historiques et Litteraires sur les Differents Theatres 
de I'Europe" (Amsterdam, 1740), p. 132, Riccoboni mourns the defection 
of the English from what he calls the reform of the stage which Ad- 
dison's "Cato" had so well begun: "On s'etait imagine que cette 
tragedie en avait donne la loi au Theatre Anglois, mais les tragedies 
nouvelles, que Ton a donnees depuis dans leur ancien gout, et particu- 
liferement une des dernieres qui a pour titre ' Georges Barnevelt,' et 
que a eu un si grand succes ne nous font pas presumer qu'ils puissent 
jamais changer." 



English Literature, 333 

From lower life we draw our scene's distress, 
Let not your equals move your pity less." 

Edward Moore, in 1753, brought out the " Gamester ;" 
and Cumberland wrote a number of plays continuing the 
reaction against the French dramatic rules. The influence 
of Lillo's reform was felt in England less than in France 
and Germany, because in England, as we have seen, the 
French rules were less revered than on the continent. 
We have seen how little the unities were regarded by the 
English writers, and teaching morality by the plays cer- 
tainly does not improve the stage. The novel absorbed 
more general interest, and the theatre languished. 

In France, this new step found many admirers and im- 
itators, the most important of whom was Diderot, who 
(vii. 95) compared the scene between Maria and Barnwell 
in prison with the " Philoctetes " of Sophocles, as the hero 
is heard shrieking, and also translated Moore's "Gamester." 
Diderot's own plays were written in direct opposition to 
the classical views of his time, but they were not success- 
ful. " The Natural Son," taken, without acknowledg- 
ment, from Goldoni's "A True Friend," is certainly as 
vapid a play as ever was written, and was a complete fail- 
ure on the stage (written 1757, brought out 1771). "The 
Father of the Family" (written 1758, acted 1761) is bet- 
ter, and was, at least in Germany and Italy, popular. But, 
as Mme. de Stael said, " Diderot, in his plays, put the 
affectation of nature in the place of the affectation of 
convention." It was not so much Diderot's own plays as 
what he wrote about acting that aided the revolution in 
taste which, in his way, Lillo had begun. To be sure, 
Diderot very strongly urged that plays should directly 
inculcate morality, forgetting, as Mr. Morley says (" Did- 
erot," 215), that " exhortation in set speeches always has 
been, and always will be, the feeblest bulwark against 



334 English Literature. 

the boiling floods of passion that helpless virtue ever in- 
vented, and it matters not at all whether the hortatory 
speeches are placed on the lips of Mr, Talkative, the son 
of Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled the Father 
of the Family." In other respects he was wiser ; his rule 
was, " Watch nature, follow her simple and spontaneous 
guiding," and he enforced this in many ways, in con- 
demning the French classic drama. " The dialogue," he 
said, " is all emphasis, wit, and glitter ; all a thousand 
leagues away from nature. Instead of artificially giving 
to their characters esprit at every point, poets ought to 
place them in such situations as will give it to them. 
Where in the world did men and women ever speak as 
we declaim ? Why should princes and kings walk differ- 
ently f roiA any man who walks w^ell ? Did they then 
gesticulate like raving madmen? Do princesses when 
they speak utter sharp hissings?" ("Bijoux Indiscrets," 
ch. xxxviii.) It was in the criticism of details that he was 
wisest and that his influence was most widely felt.* One 
reason was that the great romantic revival was to draw 
its life from the Dark Ages, which Diderot f hated, as did 

* He said (Morley's "Diderot," p. 226) that, first, a domestic or bourgeois 
tragedy must be created; secondly, the conditions of men, their callings 
and situations, the types of classes, in short, must be substituted for mere 
individual characters ; thirdly, a real tragedy must be introduced upon the 
lyric theatre ; and that, finally, the dance must be brought within the forms 
of a true poem. 

Diderot wrote plays that brought into literature the sufferings of the 
middle classes, as they then began to be put upon canvas by Greuze. 
This connection between painting and literature may be often seen. The 
Dutch painters were much admired, for instance, in England and Spain. 
Louis XIV. could not tolerate them. A full exposition of the analogy be- 
tween the two ai'ts would take up too much space. 

t It would not be exact to say that all the influence which moved Diderot 
in this direction came from Lillo alone. Dcstouches (1 680-1 Y54) in his 



English Literature. 335 

all the Encyclopaedists. He, however, broke open the 
road which literature was about to follow. 

Diderot's influence on Lessing was very great, and this 
showed itself not only in the German's onslaught on the 
so-called tragedy, which is a model of literary criticism, 
but also in his creative work, where he closely copied the 
English models, and with more ability than was shown by 
Diderot, who was a critic above all things. We left the 
German stage, when we last spoke of it, in the care of 
Gottsched, who had brought out his play, " Der sterbende 
Cato " (1732), modelling himself on Addison's play, doubt- 
less with special delight that he could appeal to Addi- 
son's example ; for, as we saw, his opponents, Bodmer es- 
pecially, made great use of Addison's defence of Milton 
in their attack on the French school. If the literature of 
this period was everywhere artificial, an invention of the 
cultivated classes, nowhere was this more the case than 
in Germany. There the divorce between the aristocracy 

" Glorieux," and La Chanssee (1 692-1*754), preceded him in this movement. 
Kiccoboni wrote of the latter : " La Chaussee a invente un nouveau genre 
de comedie ; elle avait toujours represente les incidents doraestiques des 
bourgeois, des gens aises et quelquefois meme des artisans. II y a cepen- 
dant dans la societe une espece de personnages qui sont exclus d'une ac- 
tion comique; on croit les gentilshommes et les grands seigneurs d'une 
haute naissance, trop eleves pour entrer dans les situations domestiques 
qui ont toujours ete le partage de la comedie; ils ne peuvent pas non 
plus agir dans le tragique, parce qu'ils ne sont pas assez grands pour 
chausser le cothurne, que n'appartient qu'a des princes et a des actions 
heroiques. Ce sont ces niemes personnes, qui occupent, si I'on pent se 
servir de ce terme, une espece de niche isolee et un certain milieu entre le 
rang eleve de la tragedie et le populaire de la comedie, que M. de la 
Chaussee a imagine de faire entrer dans une action, qui puisse avoir tantot 
I'inleressant de la tragedie et tantot les situations de la vie civile entre 
des gens de condition, et qui conserve aussi le caractere de la come Jie " 
(Lettre ^ Muratori). 

But it is to be noticed that La Chaussee kept to the unities ! 



336 English Literature. 

and the people was complete ; the language even was 
neglected, and French became the common medium of 
communication, with which all the writers were familiar 
and many used exclusively. But the seed which Bodmer 
sowed bore good fruit, and the nation turned gradually 
away from France and learned to read and study English 
writers. This tendency prevailed throughout the last 
century. We see it referred to in Goethe's autobiogra- 
phy, and in old libraries we find a number of German 
reprints of English books, such as Goldsmith and Ossian, 
and countless translations of popular writers. We find 
mention, too, of occasional translations of single plays of 
Shakspere. "Julius Caesar" was put into German in 1741, 
but into Alexandrines, however. Lessing, who was born 
in 1729, welcomed the new movement, and wrote his " Miss 
Sara Sampson" (1755), the very name of which indicates 
its pedigree. This play belongs to the same school wdth 
" George Barnwell " and the " Gamester ;" it is what the 
Germans call a " biirgerliches Trauerspiel." One of his 
friends, Ramier, wrote to Gleim, " The audience sat for 
four hours like statues, and dissolved in tears."* 

Here the tearfulness of the last century may be said to 
begin. Indeed, these plays were called la coniedie larmo- 
yante as well as bourgeoise, and the sentimentality which 
appeared in them and novels was one of the early reac- 
tions against the omnipotence of reason. f Judging from 

* Schroder, later known as the actor of Shakspei'e, and who held in 
Germany much the same place as Garrick in England, was then but ten 
years old, and played the little girl, Arabella. 

t Compare the French enthusiasm over Rousseau. Thus, Taine," L' Ancien 
Regime," p. 210 : " On batit dans son pare un petit temple a I'Amitie. On 
dresse dans son cabinet un petit temple au Bienfaisance. On porte des 
robes a la J. J. Rousseau ' analogues aux principes de cet auteur.' On 
choisit pour coiffure ' des poufs au sentiment,' dans lesquels on place le 
poi'trait de sa fille, de sa mere, dc son serin, de son chien, tout cela garni 



English Literature. 337 

their literature, our ancestors in the last century Vv^hen they 
were alone brooded over the terrors of the grave ; when 
they were in the company of their kind, they wept pro- 
fusely. At any rate, those Germans who wept over " Miss 
Sara Sampson " had soon a chance to weep again, for 
"George Barnwell" was a few days later acted by the 
same troupe (Stahr, i. 145). Of Diderot's further influ- 
ence on Lessing — which the German critic cheerfully ac- 
knowledged — and of "Minna von Barnhelm," etc., there 
is no need of speaking here. It is only necessary to say 
that in the "Emilia Galotti" Lessing took a step further 
by placing the sanctity of the family in direct opposition 
to the caprice of a prince (as did Schiller in his " Kabale 
und Liebe "), and that he lifted up the whole drama by 
precept as well as example when he showed the Germans 
how great a genius was Shakspere. He did this, too, with- 
out injustice to the French tragedians. 

In En2:land, however, there was no resuscitation of the 
drama, but the novel flourished as it had not done before, 
and we must return to Richardson to see the full nature 
of this change. It would be easy to turn Richardson to 
ridicule. The enormous length of his novels may seem 
absurd to us, but this must have been a great charm in 
the days when amusing literature was in its infancy. We 
have seen the strong moral tendency in the writers of this 
age, and although Pamela taught the practical lesson that 



des cheveux de son pere ou d'uii ami de coeur. . . . Toutes les fois que des 
amies se disent des choses sensibles, elles doivent subitement prendre une 
petite voix claire et trainante, se regarder tendrement en penchant la tete, 
et s'embrasser souvent." 

See also Erich Schmidt's " Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe," p. 190; 
Goncourt's "La Femme au XVIIP Siecle," p. 380 ; Morley's " Rousseau," 
ii. 31. Compare Miss Austen's " Sense and Sensibility." See, too, "A 
Study of Sensibility " in the Fortnightly for September, 1882. 

15 



338 English Literature. 

virtue secured position in this world as well as in the next, 
Richardson in " Clarissa Harlowe " drew a picture of real, 
indomitable virtue. "Pamela" was enormously admired 
at the time. As Mr. Morley says (" Diderot," p. 256), 
" All England went mad with enthusiasm over the trials, 
the virtue, the triumph of a rustic ladies' maid," and he 
points out that this novel marked a social as w^ell as a 
literary transition. The people, we see, were beginning 
to lift up their heads and to assert themselves. In France, 
the enthusiasm w^as no less intense. Voltaire, although 
he really introduced English literature to the French, it 
is true, did not feel it ; but Voltaire was above all things 
a member of the literary class, and that class is generally 
very far removed from possessing keen sympathy with 
the people, who are sure to introduce an element that 
needs refining ; they prefer to refine what they already 
have. Moreover, Voltaire's intellectual zeal made him de- 
test the Church as a relic of barbarism, of the Middle Ages, 
of popular superstition : he, in fact, never cared to intro- 
duce the barbarism which would follow social reform. 
What he said about " Clarissa Harlowe " was this : " It is 
cruel for a man like me to read nine whole volumes in 
which you find nothing at all. I said — even if all these 
people w^ere my relations and friends, I could take no in- 
terest in them. I can see nothing in the writer but a 
clever man who knows the curiosity of the human race, 
and is always promising something from volume to vol- 
ume, in order to go on selling them." 

In his " Lettre a d'Alembert sur les Spectacles," Rich- 
ardson praises "Pamela," and makes admiring mention of 
" George Barnwell," which appeared in a French transla- 
tion at Paris, in 1751. In a note, he says that no novel had 
ever appeared in any language which came near " Clarissa." 

Diderot set no bounds to his praise in his celebrated 



English Literature. 339 

eulogy on Richardson : " O Richardson, Richardson, 
unique among men in my eyes, thou shalt be my favorite 
all my life long ! If I am hard driven by pressing need, 
if my friend is overtaken by want, if the mediocrity of 
my fortune is not enough to give my children what is 
necessary for their education, I will sell my books ; but 
thou shalt remain to me, thou shalt remain on the same 
shelf with Moses, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles ! 

" O Richardson, I make bold to say that the truest his- 
tory is full of falsehoods, and that your romance is full of 
truths. History paints a few individuals ; you paint the 
human race. History sets down to its few individuals 
what they have neither said nor done ; whatever you have 
set down to man, he has both said and done. . . . No ; I 
say that history is often a bad novel ; and the novel as 
you have handled it, is good history. O painter of nature, 
it is you that are never false. 

" You accuse Richardson of being long ! . 4: Think of 
the details what you please, but for me they will be full 
of interest if they are only true, if they bring out the 
passions, if they display character. They are common, 
you say ; it is all what one sees every day. You are mis- 
taken ; 'tis what passes every day before your eyes, and 
what you never see." 

Dr. Johnson's criticism is worthy of note : " Why, sir, 
if you were to read Richardson for the story, your im- 
patience would be so much frighted that you would hang 
yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and 
consider the story only as giving occasion to the senti- 
ment." Nowadays, however, instead of laying violent 
hands upon ourselves, we lay them on the book, cutting 
out the useless matter,* and reading Richardson, if we 

* An abridgment appeared in Philadelphia in lYOS. 



340 English Literature. 

read him at all, only in an abridgment. What he espe- 
cially lacks is the power of delineating great passion ; he 
has the keenest eye in the world for sentiment and all the 
machinery of social life, and in the " Clarissa" has accom- 
plished the task of drawing a great tragedy by the ac- 
cumulation of details, but his Lovelace is as impossibly 
full of vices as his " Sir Charles Grandison " (did the 
name have only an accidental resemblance to Addison ?) 
is of virtues. The fact is that the aim of teaching morality 
by direct exhortation is as destructive to novels and plays 
as works of art as it is to music, sculpture, or painting. 
Society is justified in demanding that lessons of wicked- 
ness should not be inculcated, but it will in time leave 
lessons of goodness unread, though it may express the 
warmest approval of them. There is Sir Charles Gran- 
dison, for example, who was described as a model man 
after Richardson had learned with horror that some peo- 
ple had been so far misled as to admire the vicious Love- 
lace. His goodness is inexhaustible, and it is much to 
Richardson's credit that, after all, we do not hate this 
" faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw," even after 
reading the description of his virtues and their effects. 
To start with, he is young, twenty six or seven years 
old — although in the popular imagination of the present 
time he is eternally about fifty -two, or just twice his 
real age — rich, handsome : " In his aspect," writes Miss 
Byron, " there is something great and noble that shows 
him to be of rank. Were kings to be chosen for beauty 
and majesty of person. Sir Charles Grandison would have 
few competitors. I cannot quote the whole description 
of his charms ; I will turn to the contemplation of a few 
of his moral qualities, and what are closely connected 
with them, his personal habits. He dresses to the fash- 
ion, rather richly, 'tis true, than gaudily ; but still richly : 



English Literature. 341 

so that lie gives Ms fine person its full consideration. . . . 
His equipage is perfectly in taste, though not so much 
to the glare of taste, as if he aimed either to inspire 
or shew emulation. He seldom travels without a set, and 
suitable attendants ; and, which I think seems a little to 
savour of singularity, his horses are not docked ; their 
tails are only tied up when they are on the road. This I 
took notice of when we came to town. I want, methinks, 
my dear, to find some fault in his outward appearance, 
were it but to make you think me impartial ; my grati- 
tude to him, and my veneration for him notwithstanding. 
But if he be of opinion that the tails of these noble 
animals are not only a natural ornament, but are of real 
use to defend them from the vexatious insects that in 
summer are so apt to annoy them (as Jenny has just now 
told me was thought to be his reason for not depriving 
his cattle of a defence, which nature gave them), how far 
from a dispraise is this human consideration !" etc. And 
this is as near criticism of the good Sir Charles as any- 
thing in the book. Miss Byron, who is in womanly charm 
all that he is in manliness, to be sure, does most of the 
writing about him, and her feelings when he is concerned 
are very much inclined in his favor. She is not alone in 
this. Sir Charles is already half engaged to an Italian 
lady, Clementina, who is only withheld by religious scruples 
from marrying him. He holds a position in the novel very 
much like that which General Washington holds in the 
minds of good Americans who form their opinion of the 
father of their country from orations and postage-stamps. 
He is placid, able, gentlemanly, and very statuesque. He 
is willing to marry Clementina, if fate commands, though 
he is in love with Harriet, and we feel tolerably certain 
that he will not languish with a broken heart whatever 
happens. Why should he indeed ? Consolation was more 



342 Engliish Literature. 

than abundant : he has a ward, Emily, of whom Miss 
Byron writes (letter Ixxxvi.), "I wish my godfather had 
not put it in my head that Emily is cherishing (perhaps 
unknown to herself) a flame that will devour her JDeace. 
For, to be sure, this young creature can have no hope that 
— yet £50,000 is a vast fortune. — But it can never buy her 
guardian. Do you think such a man as Sir Charles Grandi- 
son has a price ? — I am sure he has not." It is needless 
to say that Sir Charles was proof against this new temp- 
tation. He had a snug fortune of his own. Then there 
was Lady Olivia, who pursued him to England — in vain. 
A man who is the object of so much admiration on the 
part of women is generally sure to be detested by men, 
but Sir Charles escapes this sad fate. Although he is al- 
ways correcting the faults of the wicked, he does this with 
so much tact that they cannot withhold their respect for 
him. He especially opposed duelling. And when he had 
rescued Miss Byron from the hands of her abductor, this 
villain wished to get satisfaction from Sir Charles, but 
there was no persuading him to fight. Not that he was a 
coward — far from it ; he had conscientious objections to 
the practice. He talks so reasonably that he converts his 
opponents to his views, which he expounds at some length, 
to the admiration of his hearers. " ' The devil take me. Sir 
Hargrave,' " says one, " 'if you shall not make up matters 
with such a noble adversary.' " The other says: " ' He has 
won me to his side. ... I had rather have Sir Charles 
Grandison for my friend than the greatest prince on 
earth !' " And the third : " ' I had rather be Sir Charles 
Grandison in this one past hour, than the Great Mogul all 
my life.'" "And Sir Hargrave even sobbed." He has, 
too, great skill with the sword, so that when he was set 
upon by two ruffians in his own house, he disarmed them 
both and turned them out-of-doors. He mourns, however, 



English Literature. 343 

that he has been " provoked by two such men to violate 
the sanctity of his own house." This is the only crime 
even his morbid conscience can convict him of, and his 
excuse is "that there were two of them ; and that though 
I drew, yet I had the command of myself so far as only to 
defend myself, when I might have done with them what I 
pleased," And indeed he was doubly armed, for not only 
could he disarm two antagonists at a time, but even with- 
out his sword he was secure, for he once talked one of the 
wicked into a fit. 

However, this unsympathetic description of the book 
does not describe it as it seemed to our ancestors or in- 
deed to us when we read it. It does no justice to the 
manner in which, in spite of the exaggeration of the hero's 
virtues, the life of that day is represented. What he did 
was to give us realistic 'drawings of impossible people. 
Every line in their faces is from life ; they move about 
the room, open and shut doors, talk, and act apparently as 
people do in real life ; their emotions are described with 
the most cunning art, yet they lack the highest truth. 
They do not so much follow the laws of their own charac- 
ter as they do Richardson's ever-present desire to serve the 
highest morality. This is the artistic fault of the novels, 
and the reason why they are left stranded on the dusty 
shelves, for no moral excellence will long take the place 
of truth. The novels carried too heavy a load of instruc- 
tion, and it finally swamped them. Yet when the general 
tendency of the age lay in the direction of moral teaching, 
these books were enormously admired, especially when they 
were almost without rivals, and their truthfulness in regard 
to many matters of detail aided their influence. Through 
them spoke one of the main inspirations of the time, the 
new power of the middle class, and its revolt against aris- 
tocratic corruption. This tendency in literature was as 



344 English Literature. 

firmly connected with political tendencies, as nowadays 
the drawing of pictures from still lower life is indissolu- 
bly connected with the gropings of the laboring classes 
for power. The fact that, the social difference between 
Pamela, the serving-maid, and her aristocratic master, is 
broken down by means of her superior moral qualities, 
shows this. Pamela remarks somewhere that the skull of 
a king is like that of a poor man ; that princes and beggars 
must alike appear before the judgment-seat. It is not long 
before the notion of equality, when it has got thus far, is 
transferred from the next world to this. When she hears 
that her master is to be made a peer, she says it would be 
better if he were made a virtuous man. Social distinctions 
begin to be threatened when remarks of this kind are made. 

On the other hand, "Sir Charles Grandison" is an ap- 
peal in the direction of conservatism by showing the great 
how they should live — how, if they are virtuous, their de- 
pendents will be peaceable and contented. It is easy for 
us to see that the solution of these difficulties may have 
appeared simple to Richardson, yet his moral lessons were 
thrown away, and the French Revolution came at last. 
Just as now, especially in Europe, Nihilism in various 
forms lies smouldering beneath the surface, and those in 
authority seek their own pleasure and aggrandizement as 
if the future contained no perils and the past no lessons. 
In time, perhaps, the essential interdependence of all parts 
of the state will be recognized ; it will not be in fiction 
alone that working-men will be objects of interest. 

In Germany, the influence of Richardson's novels was 
very great.* Gellert wrote of him (" Ueber Richardson's 
Bildniss ") : 

" Unsterblich ist Horaei', unsterblicher bei Christen 
Dei" Bfitte Richardson." 

* Vide Erich Schmidt's "Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe," p. 11. 



English Literature. 345 

Translations flooded the market. Gellert, too, in 1746, 
wrote his novel " Das Leben der schwedischen Grafin von 
G. . . . "in close imitation of Richardson. Other writers 
followed in the same path. 

Rousseau's famous novel," La Nouvelle Heloise" (1761), 
is the most important of the books that drew inspiration 
from Richardson ; and from the impetus given by the " ISTou- 
velle Heloise " * started much of the spirit that animated 
"Werther." While Richardson's influence thus spread 
over the Continent, in England his impossible heroes and 
heroines were about to succumb to a strong reaction. f 

What deposed Richardson from the undivided suprem- 
acy which he held in England was the appearance of Field- 
ing, whose characters are certainly far from idealized. 
Fielding, after a life of varying experience as a theatre- 
manager, a student, a man of fortune, and a playwright, 
being reduced to such a condition that, as he said, he had 
no choice but to be a hackney- writer or a hackney-coach- 
man, wrote his first novel really under something like dis- 
gust with Richardson's pious devotion to respectability. 

* Was not Rousseau indebted to the matronly Richardson for some part 
of his zeal in urging that mothers nurse their children ? Vide " Sir Charles 
Grandison," letter ecc. As to Rousseau's notions about the management 
of a household in the latter part of " La Nouvelle Heloise," cf. " Sir Charles 
Grandison," letter cclxvi., and " Pamela," letter xc. 

\ England has often begun a movement that it has itself in good part 
ignored, letting it pass over to the Continent, and only fully receiving it 
after it has been trimmed and put into shape and has become universal 
property. Thus, Locke's philosophy, to some extent the family novel, and 
more recently Darwinism, which is held by a few able men, but has not 
thoroughly penetrated the universities, and is not the inspiring spirit of 
students to anything like the same extent as in Germany, or as in the 
France of the last few years. 

England produces the raw material, sends it off, and imports it again 
made up, as the Southerners do with their cotton. 

15* 



34^ Eriglish Literature. 

It was not ordinary literary jealousy that inspired him, 
but a reaction against the morbid tendencies of Richard- 
son's novels.* If these seem to draw their inspiration 
from tea and toast, Fielding's have the full flavor of 
beer and tobacco ; and no greater contrast can be im- 
agined than that between Sir Charles Grandison and 
Fielding's hearty, roystering, careless, happy - go - lucky 
heroes. Richardson's people seem to be crouching over a 
fire in a parlor ; Fielding's are forever laughing through 
the world, beginning, enjoying, or getting over a carouse. 
They are, from one point of view, brutal fellows — for 
Fielding lived in a coarse time, among a coarse people — 
but they are at least human. The adventurous picaresque 
stories have borne fruit here, although much of it is of a 
sort that we cannot admire now. Who, for instance, over 
the age of fourteen, can get any amusement from the ac- 
count of Parson Adams's visit' to Parson Trulliber ? Par- 
son Adams is simply one of the simplest, most lovable 
characters in fiction, and Fielding treats him as a jocose 
savage would treat a captive : he rolls him in the mire, 
ducks him, and plays rough tricks on him in a way that 
would shame a schoolboy. Here is the incident with Par- 
son Trulliber : Parson Adams determines to make him a 
visit ; Mr. Trulliber, who had just been feeding his pigs, 
" immediately slipped off his apron and clothed himself in 
an old night-gown, being the dress in which he always 
received company. His waf e, who informed him of Mr. 
Adams's arrival, had made a small mistake ; for she had 
told her husband, ' she believed here was a man come for 

* Others, too, thought Richardson inexact. Vide " Letters and Works 
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" (London, 1837), iii. 40, letter of Oct. 
20, nse. Compare, too, his " Sir Charles Grandison " with Mrs. Slieridan's 
vivid " Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph," which appeared in 1761, the year 
of Richardson's death. 



English Literature. 347 

some of his hogs.' This supposition made Mr. Trulliber 
hasten with the utmost expedition to attend his guest. 
'He no sooner saw Adams than, not in the least doubting 
the cause of his errand to be what his wife had imagined, 
he told him, ' he was come in very good time ; that he ex- 
pected a dealer that very afternoon;' and added, 'they 
were all pure and fat, and upwards of twenty score 
a-piece.' Adams answered, ' He believed he did not know 
him.' ' Yes, yes,' cried Trulliber, ' I have seen you often 
at fair ; why, we have dealt before now, mun, I warrant 
you. Yes, yes,' cries he, ' I remember thy face very well, 
but won't mention a word more till you have seen them, 
thoup-h I have never sold thee a flitch of such bacon as is 
now in the stye.' Upon which he laid violent hands on 
Adams, and dragged him into the hog-stye, which was in- 
deed but two steps from his parlour-window. They were 
no sooner arrived there than he cried out, ' Do but handle 
them ; step in, friend ; art welcome to handle them, wheth- 
er dost buy or no.' At which words, opening the gate, he 
pushed Adams into the pig-stye, insisting on it that he 
should handle them before he w^ould talk one word with 
him. 

" Adams, whose natural complacence was beyond any 
artificial, was obliged to comply before he was suffered to 
explain himself ; and laying hold on one of their tails, the 
unruly beast gave such a sudden spring, that he threw poor 
Adams all along in the mire. Trulliber, instead of assist- 
ing him to get up, burst into a laughter, and entering the 
stye, said to Adams, with some contempt, ' Why, dost not 
know how to handle a hog ?' " and Adams explained that 
he was a clergyman, and had not come to buy pigs. Af- 
ter breakfast, Adams explains his errand, which is to bor- 
row fourteen shillings, and, after a really amusing scene, 
he withdraws as poor as he came. 



348 English Literature, 

This is the way Fielding describes it : "A while he 
[Trulliber] rolled his eyes in silence ; sometimes sur- 
veying Adams, then his wife ; then casting them on the 
ground ; then lifting them up to heaven. At last he burst 
forth in the following accents : * Sir, I believe I know 
where to lay up my little treasure as well as another. I 
thank G — , if I am not so warm as some, I am content ; 
that is a blessing greater than riches ; and he to whom 
that is given need ask no more. To be content with little 
is greater than to possess the world ; which a man may 
possess without being so. Lay up my treasure ! What 
matters where a man's treasure is whose heart is in the 
Scripture ? there is the treasure of a Christian.' At these 
words the water ran from Adams's eyes ; and catching 
Trulliber by the hand in a rapture, ' Brother,' says he, 
* heavens bless the accident by which I came to see you ! 
I would have walked many a mile to commune with you ; 
and, believe me, I will shortly pay you a second visit ; but 
my friends, I fancy, by this time, wonder at my stay ; so 
let me have the money immediately.' Trulliber then put 
on a stern look, and cried out, ' Thou dost not intend to 
rob me ?' At which the wife, bursting into tears, fell on 
her knees, and roared out, ' O dear sir ! for heaven's sake 
don't rob my master : we are but poor people.' * Get up, 
for a fool as thou art, and go about thy business,' said 
Trulliber ; ' dost think the man will venture his life ? he 
is a beggar and no robber.' . . . *But suppose I am not a 
clergyman, I am nevertheless thy brother ; and thou, as a 
Christian, much more as a clergyman, art obliged to re- 
lieve my distress.' ' Don't preach to me !' replied Trulli- 
ber : ' dost pretend to instruct me in my duty ?' 'I fack, 
a good story,' cries Mrs. Trulliber, ' to preach to my mas- 
ter.' 'Silence, woman,' cries Trulliber. 'I would have 
thee know, friend (addressing himself to Adams), I shall 



English Literature. 349 

not learn my duty from such as thee. I know what chari- 
ty is, better than to give to yagabonds.' ... ' I am sorry,' 
answered Adams, ' that you do know what charity is, since 
you practise it no better : I must tell you, if you trust to 
your knowledge for your justification, you will find your- 
self deceived, though you should add faith to it, without 
good works.' ' Fellow,' cries Trulliber, ' dost thou speak 
ao-ainst faith in my house ? Get out of my doors : I will 
no longer remain under the same roof with a witch who 
speaks wantonly of faith and the Scriptures.' ' Name not 
the Scriptures,' says Adams. ' How, not name the Script- 
ures ! Do you disbelieve the Scriptures ?' cries Trulliber. 
*No, but vou do,' answered Adams, 'if I may reason 
from your practice ; for their commands are so explicit, 
and their rewards and punishments are so immense, that 
it is impossible a man should stedf astly believe without 
obeying. Now, there is no command more express, no duty 
more frequently enjoined, than charity. Whoever, there- 
fore, is void of charity, I make no scruple of pronouncing 
that he is no Christian.' ' I would not advise thee,' says 
Trulliber, ' to say that I am no Christian : I won't take it 
of you ; for I believe I am as good a man as thyself.' . . . 
His wife, seeing him clench his fist, interposed, and begged 
him not to fight, but to show himself a true Christian, and 
take the law of him. As nothing could provoke Adams 
to strike, but an absolute assault on himself or his friend, 
he smiled at the angry looks and gestures of Trulliber ; 
and telling him he was sorry to see such men in orders, 
departed without further ceremony." 

Here the later scene relieves the horse-play of the first 
part, but the reader wearies of the perpetual practical 
jokes of which Adams is the object. Such a case was 
that where he was reminded that in ancient days it was 
customary to receive a philosopher in great state. Ac- 



350 English Literature. 

cording to the .proposer of the plan, it was a favorite 
method of receiving Socrates. " There was a throne 
erected, on one side of which sat a king, and on the other 
a queen, with their guards and attendants ranged on both 
sides ; to them was introduced an ambassador, which 
part Socrates always used to perform himself; and w^hen 
he was led up to the footsteps of the throne, he addressed 
himself to the monarchs in some grave speech, full of 
virtue, goodness, morality, and such like. After which, 
he was seated between the king and queen, and royally 
entertained. This, I think, was the chief part." . . . Adams 
said, " It was indeed a relaxation worthy of so great a 
man ; and thought something resembling it should be 
instituted among our great men, instead of cards and 
other idle pastime, in which, he was informed, they 
trifled away too much of their lives." So the plan was 
carried out ; Parson Adams read his sermon, to the great 
entertainment of all present, and then was invited to sit 
down between their majesties. As he sat they rose, and 
he sank into the tub of water that awaited him. The 
king he also ducked ; then he left the house, catching a 
cold, " which threw him into a fever that had like to have 
cost him his life." Some of this inexhaustible boyishness 
may be merely the result of Fielding's impatience with the 
superfine priggishness of Richardson's novels, and in part 
a precise copy of the rough life that he had himself seen. 
Some, too, is to be accounted for by the model which he 
chose — indeed, one may almost say, the only model that lay 
before him — the picaresque novel, for it was in the manner 
of " Don Quixote," as he himself avowed on his title-page, 
that the novel was written. And it is to this book, or at 
least to the spirit which animated it, and to others of the 
same kind, as Scarron's " Roman Comique," that he was 
indebted for the mock-heroic style, the caricature of the 



English Literature. 35 1 

old romances, that is to be found in both " Joseph An- 
drews " and " Tom Jones "— e. g., " Now the rake Hesperus 
had called for his breeches, and, having well rubbed his 
drowsy eyes, prepared to dress himself for all night," etc. 
The perpetual beatings of Parson Adams are, too, another 
reminiscence of " Don Quixote." The introduction of the 
episode of Leonora in " Joseph Andrews " is sanctioned, 
it will be remembered, by the example of the picaresque 
novels. 

Yet the resemblance to " Don Quixote " is but an ex- 
ternal one. Fielding has none of the poetical spirit which 
inspired Cervantes to write one of the few greatest works 
of literature, a book of which it is but the smallest merit 
that it expelled from literature the obsolescent romance. 
Life has no complexity in Fielding's eyes ; it has troubles, 
to be sure, but they are very simple troubles, such as tor- 
menting creditors, the next day's headache, the difficulty 
of finding ready money. He does not approach that more 
important field of the contrast between the imagination 
and the lessons of reality which is described allegorically 
in the story of the Don and his squire. Nor did Smollett 
do more. They both kept closely to their task of draw- 
ing life as they saw it, and whoever does this does some- 
thing rare and admirable. Yet the general movement of 
the novel w^as away from them. They brought to its 
highest development the novel of incident, of life, and 
they paid no attention to the wave of sentimentality that 
was bedewing the eyes of half of their contemporaries. 
The other half undoubtedly enjoyed the rough heartiness 
of these writers, and we may see, in the controversy which 
Sterne excitecl, that at length public opinion was ceasing 
to be a unit. Literature was beginning to be divided into 
sets, as various influences w^ere at work to affect men's 
minds. I have just mentioned Sterne, and it is interest- 



352 English Literature. 

ing to notice that tlie first volume of his " Tristram 
Shandy" was written in 1759, ten years after the publi- 
cation of " Tom Jones." At this time Sterne was forty- 
six years old. As his books show, he had dabbled in 
old French writers, as, indeed, had many of his contem- 
poraries and predecessors, for a number of the light 
songs of Suckling, the poets of the Restoration, of Prior, 
etc., are translated from that language.* It was not only 
in Rabelais that Sterne found a precedent for his endless 
digressions ; other Frenchmen had followed that great 
model. It was a new kind of writino; in Eno-land, how- 
ever, and the publishers would have nothing to do with 
it, so that Sterne had the first two volumes printed at 
York, at his own expense. He swiftly found himself 
famous. Two hundred copies were sold in the first two 
days — a large number for the time, although in 1751 
Fielding's " Amelia " was issued, of which Dr. Johnson 
said, " it was perhaps the only book of which, being 
printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called 
for before night." But Fielding was a famous novelist, 
and Sterne was unknown outside of the circle of his 
friends. In a few months Sterne went to London to 
taste the sweets of popularity, and few have ever had 
such great success. Indeed, he was only outdone by 
Byron in this respect, and Byron had many other advan- 
tages — youth, beauty, and rank. Sterne was at once the 
rage. Salads, games of cards, race-horses, and doubtless 
hats, were named " Tristram Shandy." Reynolds painted 
the author's portrait ; Hogarth designed a frontispiece 

* For example, " La Fleur des Chansons Anioreuses " (Rouen, dr. 1600 ; 
reprinted Brussels, 1866) contains the French originals of some of Suck- 
ling's and Di"3'den's songs, as well as what was probably the original of 
the song printed in the " Golden Treasury," " While that the sun with his 
beams hot." 

» ^\ 



English Literature. 353 

for the book ; Warburton, Pope's friend, in January, 
1760, bishop of Gloucester, recommended the novel to his 
brother-bishops, and Sterne found himself suddenly lifted 
out of obscurity and become a popular idol. Alongside 
of warm praise, there was much powerful opposition. 
Horace Walpole said : " At present, nothing is talked of, 
nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a very 
insipid and tedious performance : it is a kind of novel, 
called ' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy ;' the 
great humour of which consists in the whole narration 
always going backwards. I can conceive a man saying 
that it would be droll to write a book in that manner, but 
have no notion of his persevering in executing it. It 
makes one smile two or three times at the beginning, 
but in recompense makes one yawn for two hours. The 
characters are tolerably kept up, but the humour is for- 
ever attempted and missed." * 

Goldsmith, in his " Citizen of the World," said : " There 

* Walpole's literary Judgments are curious : " I had rather have written 
the most absurd Hnes in Lee than ' Leonidas ' or the ' Seasons.' . . . There 
is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside, who writes odes : in one 
of them he has lately published, he says, ' Light the tapers, urge the fire.' 
Had not you rather make gods jostle in the dark than light the candles 
for fear they should break their heads ?" " I have no desire to know the 
rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson, 
down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith ; though the latter changeling has had 
bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense till he changed it for 
words, and sold it for a pension." 

About the "Botanic Garden," he says: "I send you the most delicious 
poem upon earth. If you don't know what it is all about, or why, at least 
you will find glorious similes about everything in the world, and I defy 
you to discover three bad verses in the whole stock," etc. And to Jeph- 
son, about his " Braganza :" " You seem to me to have imitated Beaumont 
and Fletcher, though your play is superior to all theirs. . . . You are so 
great a poet, Sir, that you have no occasion to labour anything but your 
plots," etc. 



354 English Literature. 

are several very dull fellows who, by a few mechanical 
helps, sometimes learn to become extremely brilliant and 
amusing, with a little dexterity in the management of the 
eyebrows, fingers, and nose. . . . But the writer finds it 
impossible to throw his winks, his shrugs, or his attitudes, 
upon paper. . . . As in common conversation, the best 
way to make the audience laugh is by first laughing your- 
self ; so in writing, the properest manner is to show an 
attempt at humour, which will pass upon most for humour 
in reality. To effect this, readers must be treated with 
the most perfect familiarity : in one page the author is to 
make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the 
nose ; he must talk in riddles, and then send them to bed 
in order to dream for the solution. He must speak of 
himself, and his chapters, his manner, and what he would 
be at, and his own importance, and his mother's impor- 
tance, with the most unpitying prolixity ; and now and 
then testifying his contempt for all but himself, smiling 
without a jest, and without wit professing vivacity " (let- 
ter lii.). Richardson, who certainly was not a man of 
wide literary taste, thought the book execrable, and Dr. 
Johnson despised it. The difference of opinion among 
men of authority soon expressed itself in print ; pam- 
phlets, it is said, were printed on each side, but Sterne's 
popularity among his friends was preserved by his per- 
petual wit. Warburton gave him a great deal of good 
advice Avhich he did not take, and a purse of gold which 
he did ; but finally the bishop grew weary of his new 
friend, and, after passing through the stage of indifference, 
reached that of positive aversion, and he finally called 
Sterne an irrevocable scoundrel. But what did Sterne 
care for that ? He was given a new vicarage, which he 
called Shandy Hall, the name it still bears, and made over 
his other parishes to a curate. He had hopes of being 



English Literai/ure. 355 

made a bishop, but the accession of George III. destroyed 
these. He found consolation in more worldly pleasures. 
" I never dined at home once since I arrived — am four- 
teen dinners deep engaged just now, and fear matters will 
be worse with me in that point than better." And again, 
after the publication of two more volumes : " One half of 
the town abuse my book as bitterly as the other half cry 
it up to the skies ; the best is they abuse and buy it, and 
at such a rate that we are going on with a second edition 
as fast as possible." 

What is to be noticed is this— that the modern men 
praised him, the old-fashioned condemned him. He rep- 
resented a considerable part of the new spirit that was 
spreading over Europe, the sensibility that was weeping 
over Rousseau and preparing to weep over the young 
Werther. The reaction against the long reign of reason 
was wide-spread, and was naturally detested by those who 
were satisfied by the old order of things. Even now,' 
when we have learned to be tolerant of the eccentricity 
of other ages, it is hard to read with patience Sterne's dis- 
cursive pages, and we can readily understand the feelings 
of those who fancied that grinning through a horse-collar 
was a dignified amusement by the side of composing pas- 
sages like this : " Ptr— r— r— ing, twing,— twang, prut, 
prut, 'tis a cursed bad fiddle ! Do you know whether my 
fiddle's in tune or no ? They should be fifths.— 'Tis evi- 
dently strung — tr-a-e-i-o-u — twang — The bridge is a 
mile too high, aiid the ' sound post ' absolutely down, else 

— trut, prut Hark, 'tis not so bad a tone. Diddle, 

diddle, diddle, diddle, dum twaddle-diddle, tweedle- 

diddle, twiddle-diddle, twoddle-diddle, tweedle-diddle — 
pj.^^t— trut— krish — krash— krush. We have undone you, 
sir, but you see he is no worse." And the book is crammed 
with these tedious attempts at facetiousness, these fling- 



356 English Literature. 

ings of the heels into the air, the natural result of the 
escape from long repression. They serve now but to 
establish one undeniable truth that is too often forgotten, 
that excess on one side is followed by excess on the other ; 
that the pendulum, if it starts from a high place on the 
right side, will reach a high point on the left. The true 
place will be reached in time, but the first impulse is 
probably an excessive one. We see, for instance, in 
French fiction of the present day a violent reaction from 
the artificial methods of romanticism, a marked depart- 
ure from the civilized fairy-land in which for a long time 
writers have placed the scene of their books — and the new 
men go just as far in the other way ; they offend us by 
going so far from fairy-land into the territory of foulness 
that they are condemned more than is perhaps right. 
They will probably be followed by men who will be more 
moderate. One thing we may be sure of, the world will 
not go back to the belief in the things which they have 
demolished. Tastes may differ, and swing from one side to 
the other, but men cannot return to old opinions. They 
try to do it ; they struggle to be simple, but the very 
effort destroys simplicity. This, however, is a digression. 
What has made " Tristram Shandy " an immortal book is 
the pathos and humor with which Mr. Shandy and his 
brother, Uncle Toby, are described. Here and there, 
amid affectation, tediousness, and odious leering, we come 
across passages that stand out like fine paintings in a large 
gallery crowded with third or fourth rate work. It was 
not only Sterne's restless style that enraged half his hear- 
ers, it was the attack he made on the literary principles 
that governed the world. Thus (bk. i. chap, iv.) : " I know 
there are readers in the world, as well as many other 
good people in it, who are no readers at all, — who find 
themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole 



English Literature. 357 

secret from first to last, of everything whicli concerns 

you. £ x^ • 

" It is in pure compliance with this humour ot theirs, 
and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any 
one soul living, that I have been so very particular already. 
As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in 
the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, 
professions, and denominations of men whatever,— be no 
less read than the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' itself-and, m the 
end, prove the very thing which Montaigne dreaded his 
essa'ys should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-wm- 
dow,— I find it necessary to consult every one a little to 
his turn ; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a 
little further in the same way : For which cause, right 
glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself m the 
way I have done ; and that I am able to go on tracing 
everything in it, as Horace says, ah ovo. 

" Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion al- 
together : But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic 
poem or a tragedy (I forget which), -besides, if it was not 
so I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon ; for in writmg what 
I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, 
nor to any man's rules that ever lived." 

And again with the dedication (bk. i. chap, xix.) : " But, 
indeed, to speak of my father as he was ;-he was cer- 
tainly irresistible both in his orations and disputations ; he 
was born an orator, Oeog.ga.rog. Persuasion hung upon 
his lips, and the elements of Logic and Rhetoric were so 
blended up in him— and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess 
at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent— that 
nature might have stood up and said—' This man is elo- 
quent.' In short, whether he was on the weak or the 
strong side of the question 'twas hazardous in either 
case to attack him. And yet, 'tis strange, he had never 



358 English Literature. 

read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Isocrates, 
nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst the ancients ; nor 
Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby amongst 
the moderns ; and what is more astonishing, he had never 
in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck 
into his mind, by one single lecture on Crackenthorp or 
Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or commentator ; — he 
knew not so much as in what the difference of an argu- 
ment ad ignorantiam^ and an argument ad homineni con- 
sisted ; so that I well remember, when he went up along 
with me to enter my name at Jesus College in , . . , it was 
a matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor and two 
or three fellows of that learned society — that a man who 
knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be 
able to work after that fashion with them." Jesting of 
this sort must have seemed singularly irreverent to some 
of Sterne's contemporaries. 

The book abounds with such passages (bk. iii. chap, 
xxiv.) : " I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, 
or Ricaboni say — though I never read one of them." And 
(bk. iii. chap, xii.) : ''And how did Carrick speak the solil- 
oquy last night? — Oh, against all rule, my lord — most 
ungrammatically ! between the substantive and the adjec- 
tive, which should agree together in number, case, and 
gender, he made a breach thus — stopping, as if the point 
wanted settling ; and betwixt the nominative case, which 
youT lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended 
his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and 
three-fifths by a stop-watch, my lord, each time. — Admir- 
able grammarian ! But in suspending his voice — was the 
sense suspended likewise ? Did no expression of attitude 
or countenance fill up the chasm? Was the eye silent? 
Did you narrowly look ? — I looked only at the stop-watch, 
my lord. — Excellent observer ! 



English Literature. 359 

" And what of this new book the whole world makes such 
a rout about ? — Oh ! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord — quite 
an irregular thing ! not one of the angles at the four cor- 
ners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, 
&c., my lord, in my pocket. — Excellent critic ! 

"And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at ; 
—upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, 
and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu, 
'tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions. — Admira- 
ble connoisseur ! 

"And did you step in to look at the grand picture in 
your way back ? — 'Tis a melancholy daub, my lord ; not 
one principle of the pyramid in any one group! — and what 
a price ! — for there is nothing of the colouring of Titian, — 
the expression of Rubens, — the grace of Raphael, — the 
purity of Domenichino, — the corregiescity of Correggio, — 
the learning of Poussin, — the airs of Guido, — the taste of 
the Carachis, — or the grand contour of Angelo — grant me 
patience, just heaven ! — Of all the cants which are canted 
in this canting world — though the cant of hypocrites may 
be the worst — the cant of criticism is the most tormenting ! 

" I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse 
worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose gen- 
erous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into 
his author's hands — be pleased he knows not why, and 
cares not wherefore." 

Is it any wonder that half the world despised him, es- 
pecially when he gave excuse for reasonable prejudice by 
superfluous indecorum ? The outlook would have seemed 
black if they had for a moment supposed that this novel 
would ever become a classic. 

The sermons, too, though they have been praised by no 
less an authority than Mr. Gladstone, enable us to under- 
stand how Methodism made its way in England amid the 



360 English Literature. 

general frivolity of the Established Church. As Gray said 
of them, " You often see him tottering on the verge of 
laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of 
the audience." Thus when he had given out his text 
(Ecclesiastes vii. 2,, 3), "It is better to go to the house 
of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting," he be- 
gan, " That I deny. But let us hear the wise man's reason- 
ing upon it. ' Sorrow is better than laughter,' for a 
cracked - brain order of Carthusian monks, I grant ; but 
not for men of the world." Or this : " The way the world 
usually judges is to sum up the good and bad against each 
other, deduct the lesser of these articles from the greater, 
and (as we do in passing other accounts) give credit to 
the man for what remains upon the balance." Often, too, 
reputations are " sent out of the world by distant hmts, 
nodded away and cruelly winked into suspicion." Is it 
surprising that they were entitled the sermons of Mr. 
Yorick, published by Mr. Sterne ? Dr. Johnson once owned 
that he had read them, "but," he said, "it was in a stage- 
coach ; I should not even have deigned to have looked 
at them had I been at large ;" and he said at another time, 
in Sherlock, and Tillotson, and Beveridge, " you drink the 
cup of salvation to the bottom ; here, you have merely 
the froth from the surface." Certainly, when Sterne 
preached in Paris, to the leading unbelievers of the place, 
he was in more congenial company than he could have 
been in at home ; and we are told that once he preached 
by invitation before the English ambassador there, and, as 
Stapf er says, this gave his friends, Holbach, Diderot, David 
Hume, Wilkes, etc., a chance to go for once in their lives 
into a church. 

Yet Sterne's facetious remarks on religion are scarcely 
further removed from the great awakening that was about 
to pass over the religious sentiments of the English peo- 



English Literature. 361 

pie than were his literary innovations from the serious 
change that was even then giving signs of its approach. 
Yet, as we have seen, even he was helping the work ; he 
was breaking through the rigid chains of conventionality, 
laughing at formal rules, and showing the pathetic side 
of life. But, clever as his work was, it belonged essen- 
tially to the ante-revolutionary period, that curious time 
when every one's attention was turned to solving by gen- 
tle measures the questions which stirred the world at the 
end of the last century. Yet it is with gentleness that 
such things begin, and in ridiculing the pedantry that 
marked his contemporaries Sterne was doing good work. 
When, in his " Sentimental Journey," he turned away from 
all the statistics that made up the books of travels written 
by his predecessors, and wrote not about old churches, 
and views and picture-galleries, he was judging many of 
the volumes which were written in the last century and 
are reprinted, for that matter, with new names on the 
title-page, every year of the present. Addison, for in- 
stance, visited Italy, apparently to verify the descriptions 
written by the Latin poets, and Sterne was anxious to 
show that what the traveller saw depended much more on 
his own whims than on the geography of the place. It 
was, in short, what it is defined to be by the title. 

Yet we feel that Sterne was wholly unaware of the mag- 
nitude of the change that was impending. He lived at a 
time when society in France and England was, so to 
speak, dancing on the edge of a volcano ; but few ima- 
gined what disturbances were about to break forth. But 
to ask political wisdom, which was denied even to political 
students, of the novelist, is going out of our way to find 
fault. It is enough that Sterne has added at least one 
figure to the few immortals of fiction, and to have done 
this inclines one to overlook his many and obvious errors. 

16 



362 English Liieratxire. 

What Sterne possessed to a greater exten-t than any other 
English writer was the combination of qu-alities that in a 
Frenchman we call Vesprit gaulois. There is a sort of in- 
tellectual kinship between him and La Fontaine, for in- 
stance, which may to some extent explain the English- 
man's popularity in France. The resemblance does not 
consist in what those who do not like him call his ribaldry, 
alone, but quite as much, or more, in his way of being 
serious, as in the less facetious parts of the " Sentimental 
Journey." Stapfer, in his excellent life of Sterne, brings 
out Sterne's seriousness very clearly. The John Hall 
Stevenson who in his worthless " Crazy Tales " tried to 
assume a Gallic wit and grace, showed himself merely 
a degraded Englishman. Sterne's sins brought violent 
retribution ; his books he made unreadable for half the 
English-speaking race, and for the half that reads most. 
Moreover, his minor faults were easily and freely copied. 
Continuations of the " Sentimental Journey " abounded. 
Spurious *' Letters to Eliza and from Eliza " were printed. 
Writers imitated his digressions and typographical freaks. 
Diderot honored him by clever imitation, and sentimen- 
talism became one of the vices of the time. Whereas 
even Sterne's sentiment was often forced, that of his imi- 
tators became unbearable; he was ruined by his friends. 

II. It is curious to observe a more fruitful inspiration 
which offered itself to novel-writers. Sterne brought to 
its climax one of the prevailing forces of his day, and after 
him we find but feeble attempts to produce the same notes. 
Fiction, or at least the most successful fiction, moved in 
a different channel. The first to lead the way being 
Horace Walpole, of all men, in his " Castle of Otranto." 
This story fills one of the conditions to be found in al- 
most every form of writing that leaves its mark ; its main 
merit is its novelty ; it is itself commonplace and nearly 



English Literature. 363 

unreadable.* It was an attempt to revive what was called 
the Gothic romance — Walpole called it a Gothic story — 
with such modifications as should serve to make the book 
read like a true narration. He said : *' That great master 
of nature, Shakspere, was the model I copied." 

We have seen how the whole movement in art and 
literature ever since the Renaissance had been directed 
against the Middle Ages ; how that period had been re- 
garded as one of barbarism, every trace of which had to 
be eradicated from the human mind ; how Gothic archi- 
tecture was derided, and the classic and pseudo - classic 
admired ; how rigidly writers followed the steady light 
of modern thought, which aimed to clear away supersti- 
tion and to substitute reason. The work seemed at length 
done ; in France, religion was deposed, and even in Eng- 
land it was unfashionable, as we saw when we examined 
Sterne's shandyisms in the pulpit — yet at the very moment 
the work seemed accomplished men's minds returned with 
curiosity towards what they had just learned to reject, ex- 
actly as at the point of noon, when all is brightest, the sun, 
that has been climbing the heavens since dawn, begins to 
decline towards setting. Mr. Leslie Stephen is right when 
he says that thought moves in a spiral curve. Yet in 
literature the night that was approaching was not the one 
that had been left behind ; that was a dark one, this one 
was lit up by a perpetual full moon. 

We shall soon return to studying the way in which the 
change gradually made its way in poetry. In fiction the 

* The story is so silly that some have thought it was a burlesque — but 
a burlesque of what ? There was in existence no original to laugh at. A 
book that is good of its kind proves the existence of a line of predecessors ; 
unfortunately, poor books may be written at any time, but the faults of 
the " Castle of Otranto " are those of a beginner. Compare it in this re- 
spect with " George Barnwell." 



364 English Literature. 

plunge was taken almost without any apparent sympathy 
with that slow but wide -spread movement. Walpole 
sniffed at everything and everybody, and he must have 
been much laughed at for his affectations. We have seen 
how Pope ridiculed in his ".Dunciad " the people who in- 
terested themselves in investigations of the past. They 
were looked upon as would be men nowadays who should 
try experiments in tattooing themselves, but Walpole was 
a good deal of an antiquary. To be sure, his taste was 
uncertain : Spenser he thought wretched stuff, and the 
" Midsummer-Night's Dream," " forty times more non- 
sensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera- 
books" (Horace Walpole to Bentley, Feb. 23, 1755). Al- 
though this view of Shakspere he afterwards modiiSed a 
little when, in his preface to the " Castle of Otranto " (2d 
ed.), after the passage quoted, in which he said that he 
had taken Shakspere for his model, he goes on : " Let 
me ask if his tragedies of ' Hamlet ' and ' Julius Csesar ' 
would not lose a considerable share of their spirit and 
wonderful beauties if the humour of the gravediggers, 
the fooleries of Polonius, and the clumsy jests of the Ro- 
man citizens were omitted or vested in heroics ? Is not 
the eloquence of Antony, the nobler and affectedly-un- 
affected oration of Brutus, artificially exalted by the rude 
bursts of nature from the mouths of their auditors ? These 
touches remind one of the Grecian sculptor, who, to con- 
vey the idea of a Colossus within the dimensions of a 
seal, inserted a little boy measuring his thumb. No, says 
Voltaire, in his edition of ' Corneille,' this mixture of 
buffoonery, and solemnity is intolerable." When Vol- 
taire defended his criticism, Walpole swallowed his words 
with great politeness, saying that when Shakspere lived 
"there had not been a Voltaire both to give laws to the 
stage, and to show on what good sense those laws were 



English Literature. 365 

founded. Your art, Sir, goes still further ; for you have 
supported your arguments without having recourse to 
the best authority, your own works. It was my inter- 
est, perhaps, to defend barbarism and irregularity," etc. 
There could be, however, no greater waste of time than 
trying to find out Walpole's real opinions, for they are 
carefully hidden, and when found are worthless. He tried 
to pin himself to Shakspere's skirts, or, as he put it, " to 
shelter [his] own daring under the canon of the brightest 
genius this country, at least, has produced." He claims 
credit in the next line for " having created a new species 
of romance," and his boast was well founded. 

I have said he was an antiquarian. In 1747 he bought 
his famous place, Strawberry Hill, which he turned into a 
pasteboard Gothic castle. He was said " to have outlived 
three sets of his own battlements," in a " little parlour 
hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper, and Jackson's Ve- 
netian prints," or *' in the room where we always live, 
hung with a blue and white paper in stripes, adorned with 
festoons." It would be easy to laugh at Walpole's notions 
of the Gothic and of house-decoration ; crocodile's tears 
could readily flow over the insincerity of the attempts at 
restoration— for that matter, even Sir Walter Scott had 
stucco and sham carving at Abbotsford as well as in his 
novels — yet Walpole had a room full of Holbeins and a 
number of genuine curiosities. What was singular was 
that he possessed this rare taste at all, not that he did not 
possess it as modified by a century of dilettanteism.* If 

* According to Eastlake {vide his " Gothic Revival"), the love of Gothic 
architecture had never quite died out in England. See also World^ No. 12, 
March, 1753 : "A few years ago, everything was Gothic; our houses, our 
beds, our bookcases, and our couches, were all copied from some parts or 
other of our old cathedrals. The Grecian architecture . . . which was 
taught by nature and polished by the graces, was totally neglected. . . . This, 



366 Engliah Literature, 

there was the sham Gothic in his house, there was also 
much in his novel, and where our grandfathers shuddered 
we yawn ; what kept them awake puts us to sleep. It 

however odd it might seem, and however unworthy of the name of Taste, 
was cultivated and was admired and still has its professors in different 
parts of England." 

Eastlake (\d mpra^ p. 52) mentions " Gothic Architecture improved by 
Rules and Proportions in many Grand Designs of Columns, Doors, Win- 
dows, Chimney-pieces, Arcades, Colonades, Porticos, Umbrellos, Temples, 
and Pavilions, etc., with Plans, Elevations, and Profiles ; geometrically ex- 
plained by B. and T. Langley" (London: 1742). He calls it a foolish 
book. 

The weight of evidence goes to show that whatever love of the Gothic 
existed was outside of the polished circles, more of whose opinions have 
reached us. Even Gray, when he went on the Continent in 1739, with 
Horace Walpole, speaks of the Cathedral at Amiens as simply a " huge 
Gothic building, beset on the outside with thousands of small statues," 
and of that at Sienna as " a huge pile of marble, laboured with a Gothic 
niceness and delicacy in the old-fashioned way." But Defoe, in his " Tour 
through Britain " (4th ed. 1748), praises Gothic architecture (e. g.y iii. 106) : 
"Another thing worthy of Notice in this Neighbourhood is the Tower and 
Spire of the Church of Langhton^ which for Delicacy and Justness of Pro- 
portion, is not excelled by any other Gothic Piece of the kind." See also 
his account of York Cathedral, and, indeed, passim. 

See, too, " Toin Jones " (1749). " The Gothic style of architecture could 
produce nothing nobler than Mr. Allworthy's house. There was an air of 
grandeur in it that struck you with awe, and rivalled the beauties of the 
best Grecian architecture ; and it was as commodious within as it was 
venerable without. . . . Beyond this [the park] the country gradually rose 
into a ridge of wild mountains, the tops of which were above the clouds." 
Consequently, Sir William Chambers must have found some people ready 
to receive these views : " To those usually called Gothic architects we are 
indebted for the first considerable improvements in construction ; there is 
a lightness in their works, an art and boldness of execution to which the 
ancients never arrived, and which the moderns comprehend and imitate 
with difficulty. . . . One cannot refrain from wishing that the Gothic 
structures were more considered, better understood, and in higher estima- 
tion than they hitherto seem to have been. Would our dilettanti, instead 



English Literature. 3^7 

is useless to be too sincere and to give the whole plot of 
this obsolete novel, in 1765. I shall mention but a few of 
the most characteristic of its qualities. Take the open- 
ing horror : the tyrant, Manfred, Prince of Otranto, is 
about to marry his son Conrad, a boy of fifteen, " a home- 
ly youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition," to Isa- 
bella, daughter of the Marquis of Vicenza ; the day is ap- 
pointed, the guests are assembled, but Conrad is missed. 
An attendant is ordered to fetch him. In a moment, he 
" came running back, breathless, in a frantic manner, his 
eyes staring, and foaming at the mouth." His first words 
are " Oh ! the helmet ! the helmet !" His emotion is par- 
donable, for, on investigation, " what a sight for a father's 
eyes ! he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost 
buried under an enormous helmet, a hundred times more 
large than any casque ever made for human being, and 
shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers." 
This incident was suggested to Walpole by a dream, and 
it is not the last time that what has seemed terrible to the 
dreamer has not appalled those to whom it has been told. 
Besides this monstrous helmet, there is a monstrous 
sword, borne by one hundred gentlemen, who seemed to 
faint under the weight of it. More than this, the limbs 
of a giant haunt the castle : one man saw his foot and 
part of his leg in one room ; another time, one of the 
servants saw, or said she saw, " upon the uppermost ban- 

of importing the gleanings of Greece, or our antiquarians, instead of pub- 
lishing loose incoherent prints, encourage persons duly qualified to under- 
take a correct elegant publication of our own cathedrals and other build- 
ings called Gothic, before they totally fall to ruin, it would be of real 
service to the arts of design, preserve the remembrance of an extraordi- 
nary style of building now sinking fast into oblivion, and at the same time 
publish to the world the riches of Britain in the splendour of her ancient 
structures " (" Treatise of Architecture," lYoQ, p. 128). 



368 English Literature. 

nister of the great stairs a hand in armour, as big, as 
big — I thought I should have swooned." This giant who 
made his appearance in serial form, in fragments like the 
statue that is to adorn Governor's Island in New York 
harbor, is not the only thing that is terrible. The statue 
of Alfonso takes part in the domestic strife, and when 
Manfred — whose bad temper, be it said by the way, is a 
good match for the bulk of the giant — says, " ' Frederick 
accepts Matilda's hand, and is content to waive his claim, 
unless I have no male issue ' — as he spoke these words," 
the incredible happened — '' three drops of blood fell 
from the nose of Alfonso's statue !" By the side of this, 
a portrait that descends from its frame, sighs, walks along 
the floor with a grave and melancholy air, and out of the 
door, which it shuts behind it with violence — is a mere 
every-day occurrence. The story is certainly ridiculous 
enough, and the plot, with its numerous complications, 
is well adapted to its setting. The heroine flees through 
secret passages, heroes pop out from behind the doors, 
strange claps of thunder are heard, which kept muttering 
for half a century ; and when Matilda interrupted the art- 
less prattle of her maid Bianca, who was talking naturally, 
after the manner, Walpole thought, of Shakspere's serving- 
people, " ' I do not wish to see you moped in a convent, 
as you would be if you had your will, and if my lady, 
your mother, who knows that a bad husband is better 
than no husband at all, did not hinder you — Bless me ! 
what noise is that ? St. Nicholas forgive me ! I was but 
in jest.' — ' It is the wind,' said Matilda, ' whistling through 
the battlements of the tower above ; you have heard it a 
thousand times,' " — when Matilda said that, she did not 
know it would be heard many thousand times again whist- 
ling about the battlements in Scott's novels and Byron's 
poems. And as for the moon, it has scarcely set yet. 



English Literature. 369 

" The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several 
intricate cloisters ; and it was not ea-sy for one, under so 
much anxiety, to find the door that opened into the cavern. 
An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous 
regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that 
shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the 
rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth 
of darkness. Every murmur struck her with new terror." 
Having found the door, she entered the vault, and "it 
gave her a kind of momentary joy to perceive an im- 
perfect ray of clouded moonshine gleam from the roof of 
the vault." In a few minutes, while she is talking with a 
youth who is helping her look for the lock to the hidden 
passage, " a ray of moonshine, streaming through a cranny 
of the ruin above, shone directly on the lock they sought." 
A few moments before, the moon had been of service, 
for " Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which 
was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, 
presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, 
which rose to the height of the windows, waving back- 
wards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accom- 
panied with a hollow and a rustling sound." And later, 
" Gliding softly between the aisles, and guided by an im- 
perfect gleam of moonshine that shone faintly through 
the illuminated windows, he stole towards the tomb of 
Alfonso," and slew his daughter, mistaking her for Isa- 
bella. Certainly Byron's Manfred got something more 
than his name from this domestic tyrant, and the poets of 
the romantic school were indebted for more than moon- 
light and roaring wind to this curious story. Here, for 
example, is Bianca's sketch of the hero who triumphed so 
long in poetry, and has now sunk to the New York Ledger 
and the covers of prune-boxes : " ' But come, madam, sup- 
pose, to-morrow morning, he [your father] was to send for 

16* 



370 English Literature. 

you to the great council chamber, and there you should 
find, at his elbow, a lovely young prince, with large black 
eyes, a smooth white forehead, and manly curling locks 
like jet ; in short, madam, a young hero, resembling the 
picture of the good Alfonso in the gallery, which you sit 
and gaze at for hours together.' — ' Do not speak lightly 
of that picture,' interrupted Matilda, sighing : ' I know 
the adoration with which I look at that picture is uncom- 
mon — but I am not in love with a coloured pannel. The 
character of that virtuous prince, the veneration with 
which my mother has inspired me for his memory, the 
orisons which, I know not why, she has enjoined me to 
pour forth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade me 
that, somehow or other, my destiny is linked with some- 
thing relating to him,' " etc. Notice another novelty, where 
Matilda, who, by a curious coincidence, spoke the truth 
in those last words, was killed, " Frederick offered his 
daughter to the new prince, which Hippolita's tenderness 
for Isabella concurred to promote ; but Theodore's grief 
was too fresh to admit the thought of another love ; and 
it was not until after frequent discourses with Isabella of 
his dear Matilda that he was persuaded he could know 
no happiness but in the society of one with whom he 
could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken 
possession of his soul." There had been melancholy be- 
fore this, just as there had been moonlight, but enchant- 
ing gloom was now about to sweep over the world. Let 
us see what other indications there were of the change in 
men's feelings. 

III. A complete examination of all the poets of the 
last century would be immeasurably tedious, and without 
going into long analyses of these writings we will examine 
them simply to discover such traces as there may be of 
what afterwards developed into genuine poetry. One of 



English Literature. 371 

the first evidences of a desire for something different 
from the regular couplet, which Pope had brought to such 
perfection, was the frequent use of blank verse. It was 
doubtless the edition of Milton, in 1688, that suggested 
this form ; or, at any rate, it confirmed them in their choice. 
In his edition of Spenser (London : Tonson, 1715,3 vols.),* 
John Hughes wrote (" Dedication to Lord Sommers," v.) : 
" It was your Lordship's encouraging a beautiful edition 
of ' Paradise Lost ' that first brought that incomparable 
poem to be generally known and esteemed." We have 
seen John Phillips's " Cyder," written, it was supposed, 
in the Miltonic manner, but it was also in more serious 
writing that this form was used. It would be rash, or at 
any rate unkind, to assert that Dr. Young, in his " Night 



* Chaucer had been less neglected than Spenser, as is readily shown. 
Editions of Chaucer: Caxton's, 1475-6, and a second six years later, 1532, 
1542, 1546, 1555, 1561, 1597, 1602; reprinted, 1687, 1721; volume con- 
taining "Prologue" and "Knight's Tale," 1737; and Tyrwhitt's, 1775- 
78; 2d ed. 1798. 

Thomas Wilson, in his "Arte of Rhetorike" (1553), quoted by Warton, 
says : " The fine courtier will talk nothing but Chaucer." 

Topsel's "History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents" (1658) quotes 
Chaucer's description of the Franklin. 

Denham, in his poem on Cowley's death, speaks of " Old Chaucer." 
In the Idler, No. 49, " On the third day uprose the sun and Mr. Marvel." 
Chaucer's " Tales," London, 1665 ; and " Troilus and Cressida " in Latin, 
by Fr. Kynaston, Oxon. 1635. 

This attempt to revive an interest in Spenser apparently met with little 
success. Dr. Johnson, in his life of Hughes : -" He did not much revive the 
curiosity of the public ; for near thirty years elapsed before his edition 
was reprinted." The Glossary contained the following words, now suffi- 
ciently familiar : aghast, appal, atween, ay (ever), baleful, bay (bark), be- 
dight, behest, boot, bootless, bourn (torrent), buxom (yielding), canon (a 
ruk), cark, carol, certes, checkmate, cheer, n., chivalry, complot, cleped, 
con, cotes, couth, craven, credence, distraught, dole, doff, don, doughty, 
dreary, eftsoons, eld, elfs, elfin, embossed, ensample, eyne, forlorn, foray, 



3/2 English Litei'ature. 

Thoughts," tried to imitate Milton in his blank verse. 
He had written several satires in the form that Pope used, 
and these are perhaps worth brief examination. Thus 
(sat. iii.), " Love of Fame a Universal Passion :" 

" To show the strength and infamy of pride, 
By all 'tis followed and by all deny'd, 
What numbers are there, which at once pursue 
Praise, and the glory to contemn it, too ? 
Vincenna knows self-praise betrays to shame, 
And therefore lays a strategem for fame ; 
Makes his approach in modesty's disguise, 
To win applause ; and takes it by surprise. 

* To err,' says he, ' in small things is my fate,' 
You know your answer, ' he's exact in great.' 

* My style,' says he, * is rude and full of faults,' 

* But, oh ! what sense ! what energy of thoughts !' 
That he wants Algebra he must confess ; 

*But not a soul to give our arms success.' 

* Ah ! That's a hit indeed,' Vincenna cries; 

* But who in heat of blood is ever wise ? 

I own 'twas wrong, when thousands called me back, 
To make that hopeless, ill-advis'd attack ; 
All say, 'twas madness ; nor dare I deny ; 
Sure never fool so well deserv'd to die,' " etc. 

His lyric flights were Jess successful ; thus, in " Ocean : 
an Ode" (1727), he says: 

gear, glee, guerdon, guileful, guise, hie, hight, hoar, ire, kirtle, lief, leman, 
levin, plight, welkin, well, v., whilom, wend, wise, n., yore. Many of the 
above and the following are taken from Percy's " Reliques :" ban, beshewn, 
blent (blended), boon, bugle (horn), churl, dank, dell, den, doublet, foregoe, 
glen, gloze, leech, meed, mishap, moor, peril, quean, scant, troth, tush, unc- 
tuous, unkempt, wax, v. The Glossary to Thomson's " Castle of Indolence " 
contains also the following, as well as some of those just quoted : bale, 
blazon, cates, deftly, eke, fain, lea, moil, nathless, palmer, prankt, ruth, 
scar, shun, smackt, sooth, thrall, ween, whenas, wot, etc. Other words in 
the Glossary to Percy are : astound, aureat, caytiffe, check (stop), dint, 
erst, and trim (exact). 



English Literature. 375 

" The stars are bright 

To cheer the night, 
And shed, through shadows, temper'd fire ; 

And Phoebus flames 

With burnish'd beams, 
Which some adore, and all admire. 

Are then the seas 

Outshone by these ? 
Bright Thetis ! thou art not outshone ; 

With kinder beams, 

And softer gleams, 
Thy bosom wears them as thy own. 

^ V ^ sj^ ;^ 

Those clouds, whose dyea 
Adorn the skies, 
That silver snow, that pearly rain ; 
Has Phoebus stole 
To grace the pole, 
. The plunder of th' invaded main ! 

The gaudy bow, 

Whose colours glow. 
Whose arch with so much skill is bent, 

To Phoebus' ray. 

Which paints so gay, 
By thee the watery woof is lent," etc. 

Then there was ''The Last Day" (1713), a subject that 
our grandfathers were fond of treating, as Dryden's lines 
about it show. Young does but little better — 

" Now man awakes, and from his silent bed, 
Where he has slept for ages, lifts his head ; 
Shakes off the slumber of ten thousand years, 
And on the borders of new worlds appears. 
Whate'er the bold, the rash adventure cost. 
In wide eternity I dare be lost. 
The Muse is wont* in narrow bounds to sing, 
To teach the swain, or celebrate the king. 
I grasp the whole, no more to parts confined, 
I lift my voice and sing to human kind. 



374 English Literature. 

I sing to men and angels ; angels join, 

While such the theme, their sacred songs with mine. 

****** 
Now monuments prove faithful to their trust, 
And render back their long-committed dust. 
Now charnels rattle ; scattered limbs and all 
The various bones, obsequious to the call, 
Self-moved, advance ; the neck perhaps to meet 
The distant head, the distant legs the feet. 
Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky 
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, 
To distant regions journeying, there to claim 
Deserted members and complete the frame. 
The trumpet's sound each fragrant mote shall hear, 
Or fix'd in earth, or if afloat in air. 
Obey the signal wafted in the wind. 
And not one sleeping atom lag behind. 

So swarming bees that on a summer's day 
In airy rings and wild meanders play, 
Charm'd with the brazen sound, their wanderings end, 
And gently circling on a bough descend " (bk. ii. 1. 1). 

These last lines refer to the rustic habit of collecting 
bees by beating a tin pan with a stick. 

*' How vast the concourse ! not in numbers more 
The waves that break on the resounding shore. 
The leaves that tremble in the shady grove, 
The lamps that gild the spangled vaults above." 

With this passage may be compared the lines in Field- 
ing's " Tom Thumb," beginning, " So have I seen." 

He tried another measure, of which this passage must 
serve as the only specimen : 

" Proud Venice sits amid the waves ; 

Her foot ambitious ocean laves : 
Art's noblest boast ! but Avhat" wondrous odds 

'Twixt Venice and Britannia's isle ! 

'Twixt mortal and immortal toil ! 
Britannia is a Venice built by' gods." 



English Literature. 375 

Is it any wonder that Young took to writing blank- 
verse ? The wonder is, perhaps, that he was read. Yet, 
while we cannot read him for delight, we know that he 
said something that our grandfathers liked to hear. What 
he uttered in his solemn way, no one would care to deny. 
He put into somewhat formal language, adorned with 
much of the crude ore of Romanticism, the yearning of 
his century for morality. That, we saw, inspired a good 
part of the Spectator, and it was the main end of the work 
done by most of the writers. But, with respect be it 
spoken, a century of preaching palls, and too often the 
undeniable excellence of the subject has blinded readers 
to faults in the execution. One thing that the poets 
were never tired of was the tomb. Young is forever 
bringing his Lorenzo to the edge of an open grave and 
bidding him look in. 

" The man how blest, who, sick of gaudy scenes, 
(Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves !) 
Is led by choice to take his favorite walk 
Beneath death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades, 
Unpierc'd by vanity's fantastic ray, 
To read his monuments, to weigh his dust. 
Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs ! 
Lorenzo ! read with me Narcissa's stone ; 
(Narcissa was thy favorite) let us read 
Her moral stone ! few doctors preach so well ; 
Few orators so tenderly can touch 
The feeling heart. What pathos in the date !" 

And this (Night ix.): 

" My solemn night-born, adjuration here: 
***** 

By the long list of swift mortality, 

From Adam downward to this evening knell, 

Which midnight waves in fancy's startled eye, 

And shocks her with an hundred centuries, 

Round death's black banner throng'd in human thought I 



3/6 English Literature. 

By thousands now resigning their last breath, 

And calling thee — wert thou so wise to hear ! 

By tombs o'er tombs arising ; human earth 

Ejected, to make room for — human earth ; 

The monarch's terror and the sexton's trade. 

By pompous obsequies that shun the day, 

The torch funereal, and the nodding plume, 

Which makes poor man's humiliation proud ; 

Boast of our ruin ! triumph of our dust ! 

By the damp vault that weeps o'er royal bones. 

And the pale lamp that shows the ghastly dead 

More ghastly, through the thick incumbent gloom ! 

By the visits (if there are), from darker scenes. 

The gliding spectre ! and the groaning grave ! 

By groans and graves, and miseries that groan 

For the grave's shelter ! by depending men. 

Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt ! 

By guilt's last audit ! by yon moon in blood. 

The rocking firmament, the falling stars. 

And thunder's last discharge, great nature's knell," etc. 

This is the romantic part of the long serious poems, 
which are rhetorical exercises in defence of morality and 
orthodoxy. Lorenzo is, for instance (Night ix.), told to 

" Imagine from their deep foundations torn 
The most gigantic sons of earth, the broad 
And towering Alps, all tost into the sea ; 
And, light as down, or volatile as air, 
Their bulks enormous, dancing on the waves, 
In time, and measure, exquisite ; while all 
The winds, in emulation of the spheres, 
Tune their sonorous instruments aloft. 
The concert swell and animate the ball. 
Would this appear amazing ?" 

To this question, Lorenzo, who has had to listen to over 
four thousand lines of declamatory blank-verse, apparent- 
ly nods his head, to signify that he should feel surprised 



English Literature. 377 

at seeing the mountains floating on the top of the sea ; 
and then he is bidden to consider 

" Worlds in a far thinner element sustained, 
And acting the same part, with greater skill, 
More rapid movement, and for noblest ends." 

He has already had immortality proved in what must 
have seemed like never-ending strains (Night vii.) : 

" And can ambition a fourth proof supply ? 
It can, and stronger than the former three ; 
Though quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise. 
***** 
" Man must soar. 
An obstinate activity within. 
An insuppressive spring, will toss him up 
In spite of fortune's load. Not kings alone, 
Each villager has his ambition too ; 
No Sultan prouder than his fettered slave : 
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw, 
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts. 
And cry, ' Behold the wonders of my might !' 
And why ? Because immortal as their lord ; 
And souls immortal must for ever heave 
At something great, the glitter or the gold, 
The praise of mortals, or the praise of heaven." 

This passage has the quality, the same in kind, though 
less in degree, that we find in the best passages which are 
familiar to us, as 

*' Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep ! 
He, like the w^orld, his ready visit pays 
When Fortune smiles ; the wretched he forsakes ; 
Swift on his downy pinion flies from wo, 
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear. 

From short (as usual) and disturbed repose 
I wake : how happy they Avho wake no more ! 
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave." 

What impresses us throughout is the rhetorical quality 



378 Englisli Liter atxire. 

of the verse, and this seems to come directly from the 
imitation of Latin poetry, where we find abundant decla- 
mation. As Mr. Sellar says, in " The Roman Poets of the 
Republic," p. 8, " They betray the want of dramatic genius 
in other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic 
poetry, and in philosophical dialogues. Their poets give 
utterance to vehemence of passion, or heroism of senti- 
ment, either directly from their own hearts and convic- 
tions, or in great rhetorical passages, attributed to the 
imaginary personages of the story — to Ariadne or Dido, 
to Turnus or Mezentius. But this utterance of passion 
and sentiment is not often united in them with a vivid 
delineation of the complex characters of men." This ex- 
ample, however, did but give encouragement to the pre- 
vailing tendency ; at least, it is not Rome alone that is to 
be blamed for all the heavy didactic poetry of the last 
century, even if we ascribe many faults to the direct imi- 
tation of those models. We have already seen how urgent 
was the yearning for moral teaching, and we find other 
poets inspired by the same gloom. Blair's " Grave " (pub- 
lished 1743, written before 1731) shows by its title what 
were the chief pleasures to be got from the poetical litera- 
ture of the time. While the very subject was awe-inspir- 
ing, passages like the following are doubtless what per- 
haps as much as any rewarded the reader : 

" See yonder hallowed fane ! the pious work 
Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot, 
And buried midst the wreck of things which were : 
There lie interred the more illustrious dead. 
The wind is up : hark ! how it howls ! methinks 
Till now I never heard a sound so dreary ! « 
Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, 
Rock'd in the spire, screams loud : the gloomy aisles, 
Black-plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons, 
And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, 



English Literature. 379 

Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, 

The mansions of the dead. Koused from their slumbers, 

In grim array the grisly spectres rise, 

Grin horrible, and obstinately sullen, 

Pass, and repass, hushed as the foot of night. 

Again the screech-owl shrieks — ungracious sound ! 

I'll hear no more — it makes one's blood run chill." 

We perceive that both Blair and Young had read Shak- 
spere and Milton, and that they both imitated certain 
qualities of the older blank-verse. They turned from the 
couplet, just as it seemed to have been firmly fixed, and 
received from those older writers the torch of real — as 
distinguished from reasonable — poetry. The light burned 
dim, and, as we have seen, blue ; the main use of the new 
verse was the promotion of orthodox religious views. It 
was the dramatic — can one say the melodramatic ? — view 
of the grave as an inspirer of pleasing gloom that was 
preparing readers for the romantic outbreak. At this 
period, the properties of the poet were but few : the tomb, 
an occasional raven or screech-owl, and the pale moon, 
with skeletons and grinning ghosts. It was on this dark 
assemblage of horrors that he depended for his most 
thrilling effects. All these seemed to belong to the teacher 
of morality ; they enforced his lessons with irrefutable ar- 
guments. One might as well try to drive away a ghost 
with fire-arms as with ill-timed frivolity, and frivolity was 
the companion of this morbid gloom ; frivolity and coarse- 
ness, for it would be hard to find a time in modem his- 
tory when there was less appreciation of beauty in the 
world than then. Even the poets had yet to learn to en- 
joy natural scenery, and what the life of the time was we 
may see in Fielding's and Smollett's novel, and in the grim 
horrors of Hogarth's plates. For a further proof of the 
connection between the fine arts and the life of the time, 



380 English Literature. 

consider these memorable designs, with their moral teach- 
ing. Hogarth is celebrated as the great English artist ; 
his unceasing morality and realism are what give him that 
fame. Every one who writes about him speaks of his 
useful lessons of morality, and it was the necessity of 
teaching morality that had so disastrous an effect on the 
poetry of the last century. At least, this was part of the 
trouble, and a great part. Even now writers maintain 
that the poet's first duty is to enforce moral lessons, and 
any one who questions this is supposed to urge teaching 
immorality. There is still a certain novelty in the aflfirma- 
tion that art is not didactic, although for nearly a hundred 
years Goethe's words have been slowly influencing writers 
and readers. What brought him to it was the inevitable 
reaction from the exaggerated preaching of the last cen- 
tury, when imagination was dead and its ghost haunted 
the churchyard. Even Gray's " Elegy " has its scene 
there, you will remember. Even Boyse, the dissolute and 
shirtless poet, whom I have mentioned as a frivolous per- 
son, wrote verses that would have done credit to a bishop. 
It was doubtless with a keen eye on his market, and not 
from an overflowing heart, that he composed his long 
poem on Deity : 

" Hence triumphs truth beyond objection clear 
(Let unbelief attend and shrink with fear !) 
That what for ever was — must surely be 
Beyond commencement, and from period free," etc. 

A paraphrase of the third chapter of Job, and a few 
sets of verses on the death of his friends and relatives, 
are among the further contributions of this wretched rake 
to the literature of his country. The influence must have 
been strong that made even him a contributor to Dr. 
Watts's " Horse Lyricae." We have seen how the need 
of decency impressed itself on the public after the ex- 



English Literature. 381 

cesses of the writers of the Restoration, and Dr. Watts 
himself is another witness to this fact. In the Preface 
to his poems, written in 1709, he says : " Thus almost in 
vain have the throne and the pulpit cried reformation ; 
while the stage and licentious poems have waged open 
war with the pious design of Church and State " (An- 
derson's " Poets," ix. 296) ; and he goes on to show the 
poetical wealth of the Old Testament in order to disprove 
the assumption "that poetry and vice are naturally akin," 
It was not strange that this opinion was held, for, he 
says, " many of the writers of the first rank, in this our 
age of national Christians, have, to their eternal shame, 
surpassed the vilest of the Gentiles. . . , The vices have 
been painted like so many goddesses, the charms of wit 
have been added to debauchery." It was Dr. Watts's 
aim to write poetry in the service of religion, and he had 
many rivals and aids. Society was reacting from the ex- 
cesses of frivolous writers. 

IV. Closely connected with these moral reformers were 
the didactic poets. We need not linger long over their 
well-meant but tedious productions. John Phillips's 
" Cyder," with its pseudo-Miltonic versification, seems to 
have been the favorite model. Take Grainger's " Sugar- 
Cane," for example (1764), iii. 455 : 

" False Gallia's sons, that hoe the ocean-isles, 
Mix with their sugar loads of worthless sand, 
Fraudful, their weight of sugar to increase. 
Far be such guile from Britain's honest swains. 
Such arts, awhile, the unwary may surprise, 
And benefit the impostor ; but, ere long, 
The skilful buyer will the fraud detect. 
And, with abhorrence, reprobate the name." 

Or take this : 

" Be thrifty, planter, e'en thy skimmings save : 
For, planter, know, the refuse of the cane 



382 English Literature. 

Serves needful purposes. Are barbecues 
The cates thou lovest ? What like rich skimmings feed 
The grunting, bristly kind ? Your labouring mules 
They soon invigorate," etc. 

Then there is Dr. Armstrong's "Art of Preserving 
Health " (1744), in which we are taught to 

" Fly, if you can, these violent extremes 
Of air : the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. 
But as the power of choosing is deny'd 
To half mankind, a further task ensues ; 
How best to mitigate these fell extremes, 
How breathe, unhurt, the withering element, 
Or hazy atmosphere. . . . 

* * * * % 

If the raw and oozy heaven offend, 
Correct the soil, and dry the sources up 
Of watery exhalation : wide and deep 
Conduct your trenches thro' the quaking bog. 
***** 
. . . and let your table smoke 
With solid roast or baked ; or what the herds 
Of tamer beasts supply," etc. 

I add an extract from Dyer's " Fleece" (1757) : 

" See the bold emigrants of Accadie, 
And Massachusett, happy in those arts 
That join the politics of trade and war, 
Bearing the palm in either : they appear 
Better exemplars ; and that hardy ci'ew. 
Who, on the frozen beach of Newfoundland, 
Hang their white fish amid the parching winds : 
The kindly fleece, in webs of Duffield woof, 
Their limbs, benumb'd, enfolds with cheerly warmth, 
And frieze of Cambria, worn by those who seek 
Thro' gulfs and dales of Hudson's winding bay, 
The beaver's fur, tho' oft they seek in vain, 
While winter's frosty rigor checks approach, 
E'en in the fiftieth latitude." 

Must it not have seemed as if Pegasus would never 



English Literature. 383 

clap his wings again, when he had been thus harnessed 
in domestic service and had to bear such heavy burdens ? 
Yet the poets followed the instincts of their time in de- 
voting themselves to the celebration of the duties and 
charms of civilization. May it not be that their work is 
not wholly lost, and that they may yet deserve our grati- 
tude by serving as a warning for those who would follow 
the advice of outsiders and make poetry an advertisement 
of science ? The arguments that are brought up now to 
urge poets to celebrate scientific discoveries were used in 
the last century in behalf of the glories of civilization and 
the laws of morality. What the result was, I have tried 
to show ; it is certainly of a kind to discourage writing 
to order. Yet evidently this way of writing came as a 
natural result of what had gone before, the especial form 
it took being based on the didactic poetry of Greece and 
Rome, with, probably, blank-verse to serve as a concession 
to those who demanded something congenial. The same 
j)henomenon, mutatis mutandis, had taken place in Italy. 
Hesiod's " Works and Days " and Vergil's " Georgics " 
found modern followers — the Yergil especially — as a mat- 
ter of course. Indeed, the first Italian imitation was by 
Rucellai, the author of the " Rosmunda," who was most 
eager in copying Roman literature.* His " Api " (jDub- 
lished 1539) was almost a continuation of the fourth 
" Georgic." Then there was Alamanni's " Coltivazione," 
a few years later. These were imitated by French writers 
{vide Ginguene's " Hist. L-itt. de I'ltalie," vol. ix. chap, i.), 
and it was under similar inspiration that the English 
didactic poets wi'ote. The j)eculiar religious tone, and 
the funereal flavor, are peculiarly English, and it is to 



* We should always bear in mind the enormous weight of the prece- 
dent of Roman imitation of Greek literature. 



384 English Literature. 

them, doubtless, that their reputation for the spleen, etc., 
is mainly due. .Young's " Night Thoughts," for instance, 
was put into French and Italian ; Phillips's " Cyder," as 
we saw, into Italian, etc.* Yet some of the men who 
wrote the dreariest of these poems at times gave proof of 
a finer poetical sense. There is much truth in at least the 
first part of what Dr. Johnson said of Dyer, that although 
he, " whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, 
by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by in- 
terspersing rural imagery and incidental digressions, by 
clothing small images in great words, and by all the 
writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, 
and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manu- 
facture, sink him under insuperable oppression ; and the 
disgust which blank-verse, encumbering and encumbered, 
superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, 
however willing to be pleased." We see here Dr. John- 
son's detestation of blank-verse ; and the question of the 
relative excellence of that and of the couplet was a burn- 
ing one in the last century. Doubtless blank-verse was a 
reaction against the couplet. It was the first sign of a 
jDrotest against that rigid form, just as in Milton's hands 
it was the last measure in which a poet of heroic propor- 
tions spoke to the world. Yet the instrument he com- 
manded the puny bardlings of the last century could not 
handle ; his dignity was mimicked by a feeble rumble, as 
if the secret of his art consisted in placing adjectives as 
far from their nouns as possible, and in transposing the 
intervening words. Yet they felt the charm of his verse ; 
that was something, and they maintained their side with 

* Vide Symonds, " Renaissance in Italy," v. 236-'7. 

In France, among other didactic poems, L. Racine's " La Religion, La 
Grace ;" Lemierre's " La Peinture ;" Boucher's " Le Mois ;" and the writings 
of Delille and St. Lambert. 



English Literature. 385 

obstinacy in the face of violent opposition. The main ob- 
jection to them is as well stated, in these lines by Robert 
Lloyd, as by any one : 

" Some Milton-mad (an affectation 
Glean'd up from college-education *) 
Approve no verse, but that which flows 
In epithetic measur'd prose, 
With trim expressions daily drest, 
Stol'n, misapplied, and not confest, 
And call it writing in the style 
Of that great Homer of our isle. 
Whilom^ what time^ eftsoons and erst, 
(So prose is oftentimes beverst) 
Sprinkled with quaint, fantastic phrase, 
Uncouth to ears of modern days, 
Make up the metre which they call, 
Blank, classic blank, their all in all." 

Yet Lloyd had imitated Spenser, in a poem called " The 
Progress of Envy " (1751), in which he had defended both 
Spenser and Milton. Evidently the current was running 
with some force by the middle of the century. Dr. John- 
son evidently thought so {vide Rambler, No. 121). " There 
are, I think, two schemes of writing, on which the labori- 
ous wits of the present time employ their faculties. . . . 
The other is the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influ- 
ence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to 
gain upon the age, and therefore deserves to be more at- 
tentively considered. ... To imitate the fictions and senti- 
ments of Spenser can incur no reproach," but not so with 
his diction and stanza. The imitations are carelessly done. 
" Perhaps, however, the style of Spenser might by long 
labour be justly copied ; but life is surely given us for 

* Many of the university men were leaders in this movement ; notably 
the Wartons. 

17 



386 English Literature, 

higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have 
wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value, but 
because it has been forgotten."* 

V. Yet the only man whose blank-verse is, even in pas- 
sages, impressive is James Thomson, whose " Seasons" is 
still a classic. Even Johnson acknowledged this, for he 
says, " His is one of the works in which blank-verse seems 
properly used. Thomson's wide expansion of general 
views, and his enumeration of circumstantial varieties, 
would have been obstructed and embarrassed by the fre- 
quent intersection of the sense, which are the necessary 
effects of rhyme." Curiously enough. Pope helped Thom- 
son with suggestions, and, more than that, with lines from 
his own pen. Here is an instance (" Chambers's Cyclo- 
paedia of Eng. Lit." ii. 13). Thomson had written : 

" Thoughtless of beaut}', she was beauty's self, 
Recluse among the woods ; if city dames 
Will deign their faith : and thus she went, compelled 
By strong necessity, with as serene 
And pleased a look as Patience e'er put on, 
To glean Palemon's fields," 

* Cumberland, in his " Memoirs," throws much light on the taste of 
his time. Thus [Am. ed.], p. 64: "I well remember, when I was newly 
come to college, with what avidity I read the Greek tragedians, and with 
what reverence I swallowed the absurdities of their chorus, and was 
bigoted to their cold characters and frigid unities ;" p. 66 : "I had no 
books of my own, and unfortunately got engaged with Spenser's ' Faery 
Queen ;' in imitation of which I began to string nonsensical stanzas to the 
same rhyming kind of measure. Though I trust I should not have sur- 
rendered myself for any length of time to the jingling strain of obsolete 
versification, yet I am indebted to my mother for the seasonable contempt 
she threw upon my imitations. I felt the force of her reproof and laid 
the ' Faery Queen ' upon the shelf." This was when he was a student at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. His mother had read Shakspere with him in 
his hovhood. 



English Literature. 387 

For those lines Pope substituted these : 

" Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self, 
Recluse among the close-embowering woods, 
As in the hollow breast of Apennine, 
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills 
A myrtle rises, far from human eyes. 
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild ; 
So flourished blooming, and unseen by all, 
The sweet Lavinia ; till at length compelled 
By strong necessity's supreme command. 
With smiling patience in her looks, she went 
To glean Palemon's fields," 

Probably few on reading these lines would ever guess 
that Pope wrote them, so relentlessly was he borne away 
by the greater forces that carry us all on. When a regi- 
ment of soldiers is passing by, with a band of music at its 
head, all marching with one uniform swing, peaceful citi- 
zens straighten their backs and find themselves instinc- 
tively keeping step with the moving mass ; in the same 
way are poets inspired by the influences around them. 
We have seen how Addison, who was distinctively a man 
of this age, misplaced in the beginning of the last cen- 
tury, occasionally fell from the ranks and lost step as he 
praised ballads ; but he was promptly hustled back into 
line by his pompous contemporaries. So here we have 
Pope as he might have been in more truly poetical times. 
When he was making up his mind what path to follow, 
his guides — and with great intelligence — told him that 
correctness was lacking in English poetry, and he became 
a correct writer. Thomson wearied of the correctness, 
and, for another thing, he inherited with his Scotch blood 
a love of nature which we find in almost all the poets of 
that country, even in the most artificial times. In the 
present day, patriotic Scotchmen take a great deal of 
credit to themselves for this immunity which some of 



388 English Literature. 

their ancestors enjoyed from the ei^idemic artificial opin- 
ions. Yet may not we who are not Scotchmen be bold 
enough to say this exemption is due to some extent to 
their geographical position, and not wholly to their lofti- 
er natures, and that they bought it at the cost of much 
savageness ? It was doubtless well worth the purchase- 
money. Not only did the peasants keep alive the gift 
of song, but many of the educated people continued to 
admire and to imitate the older writers. Collections of 
Scotch songs and ballads were published very early in 
the last century,* and, more than this, even those who 



* Watson's " Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems " 
(3 vols., l'706-9-ll) was the first. Thus, "The Publisher to the Reader'' 
says : " As the frequency of Publishing Collections of Miscellaneous Poems 
in our Neighbouring Kingdoms and States, may, in a great measure, Justify 
an Undertaking of this kind with us ; so 'tis hoped, that this being the 
first of its Nature which has been published in our own Native Scots Dia- 
lect, the Candid Reader may be the more easily induced, through the Con- 
sideration thereof, to give some Charitable Grains of Allowance, if the 
Performance come not up to such a Point of Exactness as may please an 
over nice Palate." 

In England there had appeared Dryden's " Miscellany Poems " (1684- 
1*708). "A Collection of Old Ballads" appeared in 1723, and in 1726 and 
1738. Watson's Collection inspired Allan Ramsay to compile his "Ever- 
green, Scots Poems wrote by the Ingenious before 1600" (1724), and his 
" Tea Table Miscellany " the same year, which speedily ran through twelve 
editions. The " Tea Table Miscellany" contained "All in the Downs the 
Fleet was moored," " If she be not fair for me," Mallet's " William and 
Margaret," etc. In short, it is very much such a collection as would be 
made now. It was followed by "A New Miscellany of Scots Songs" 
(1727), and, in 1769, Herd's "Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic 
Ballads," etc. This was four years after the publication of Percy's " Re- 
liques." 

It scarcely need be said that collections of admired poems were not new. 
They were familiar in England and France ; these volumes are important as 
showing the new direction in which modern taste was turning, towards the 



English Liter atiire. 389 

bowed before tlie fashionable idols at other times fol- 
lowed their own bent in writing in simpler forms. Thus, 
Allan Ramsay, who wrote a few now forgotten poems 
of the usual kind, stepped into fame with his "Gentle 
Shepherd" (1725), which, though it now reads like a 
conventional drama, seemed like a breath of fresh air 
to those who first read it. All the wits of the time 
admired it, and justly. We have seen that the pastoral 
poetry of the time was perhaps the most artificial of all 
the kinds of poetical composition then practised. The 
satirical poems were natural ; Pope's, at least, are the talk 
of a witty man, and hence essentially as genuine as the 
talk of peasants. The pastorals, however, were as artificial 
as paper flowers, and these threefold dilutions of classicism 
were thrown into the shade by this play, which contains 
many true touches, and some pretty passages, although 
the device by which the hero and heroine are found not 
to be peasants at all, but very much finer people, shows us 
how even writers who desire to begin a reform have, like 
every one else, to climb up-hill a step at a time. In Gom- 
bault's " Endymion " the poor shepherd is found to be of 
very noble family, and is hence able to marry the rich 
shepherdess. In Vauquelin de la Fresnaie's " Millie," 
No. 48, the rustic Sylvin learns that he is some one else, 
with the same result. Even now novel - writers are not 

past. Simultaneously in France, it is curious to notice, there appeared the 
first signs of interest in the earlier writers. In 1*723 came out Coustelier's 
collection containing the works of poets before Marot, and in Vlo\ Lenglet- 
Dufresnoy's edition of Mai'ot, while what Sainte-Beuve calls the reaction, 
chevaleresque dates from the reprinting of the " Petit Jehan de Saintre " 
(1724), and of "Gerard de Nevers" (1725). Tressan's adaptations of the 
old romances furthered the same taste. In 1742 appeared an edition of the 
poems of Thibaut de Champagne, etc. For a fuller list, see Sainte-Beuve's 
*' Tableau de la Poesie Fran^aise au XYP Siecle," p. 482 et seq. 



390 English Literature. 

tired of this very old device. Ramsay was quite capable 
of repeating the sounds he heard about him. Thus : 

" Ye shepherds and nymphs that adorn the gay plain, 
Approach from your sports, and attend to my strain ; 
Amongst all your number a lover so true, 
Was ne'er so undone, with such bliss in his view. 
Was ever a nymph so hard-hearted as mine ? 
She knows me sincere, and she sees how I pine," etc. 

This, of course, is but trifling — the small-talk of poetry 
— which is never of the nature of an affidavit. He wrote 
odes, and various versions and translations, but all that 
lives are his " Gentle Shepherd," and a few songs written 
in imitation of the ancient Scottish manner — e. g., " The 
Braes of Yarrow " — 

" Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride, 
Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow I" 

In England the poets could not so readily turn to still 
living popular treasures of poetry. The change had to be 
made by choosing other models to copy. It was a literary 
change — that is to say, writers made themselves over with 
an eye to imitating other poets, rather than with the sim- 
ple desire of painting nature. And, as I have so often 
said, it was Milton and Spenser who were admired and 
copied.* Thomson wrote his " Castle of Indolence " in 
the Spenserian stanza, and this novelty was followed by 
many now forgotten bards. 

One of the greatest poems of the last century was 
Gray's " Elegy in a Country Churchyard " (1749) . Man's 
mortality, as we have seen, was a favorite subject of 
his contemporaries and predecessors ; but Gray does not 
try to show the horror of the generally recognized fact. 
He rather sets before us the pathos of an obscure life and 

* Vide L. Stephen's " History of English Thought," ii. 359. 



English Literature. 391 

untimely death. ; and life is, one may say, a poet's first 
subject. Often, too, it is more profoundly pathetic than 
any death. Young's prolonged declamation about the 
tomb makes us sad, to be sure, but only by its unrelenting 
persistence, while Gray's immortal elegy is full of real 
melancholy, which is not despair, but thoughtfulness. It 
may be doubted whether any other poem in the English 
language has been so frequently imitated.* No one of 
the copies, however, comes anywhere near the original. 
Gray has other claims upon our admiration, for he was 
one of the first of writers to treat a mountain with 
proper respect. It will be remembered that earlier in 
the century mountains were the scorn of mankind. Gray 
was almost the first to mention their grandeur. Thus, 
writing to his mother from Lyons, Oct. 13, 1739, he 
says : '' It is a fortnight since we set out hence upon a lit- 
tle excursion to Geneva. We took the longest road, which 
lies through Savoy, on purpose to see a famous monastery, 
called the Grande Chartreuse, and had no reason to think 
our time lost. . . . From thence (Echelles) we proceeded on 

* Falconer, Thomas Warton, James Graeme, William Whitehead, John 
Scott, Henry Headley, Sir John Henry Moore, Robert Lovell, are but a few 
of the numberless poets who imitated it, "It spread," Mr. Mason says, 
" at first on account of the affecting and pensive cast of the subject, just 
like Hervey's ' Meditations on the Tombs.' Soon after its publication I 
remember sitting with Mr. Gray in his college apartment. He expressed 
to me his surprise at the rapidity of its sale. I replied : 

' Sunt lacrymse rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.' 
He paused awhile, and, taking his pen, wrote the line on a printed copy 
of it lying on his table. ' This,' said he, ' shall be its future motto.' 'Pity,' 
said I, ' that Dr. Young's " Night Thoughts " have preoccupied it.' ' So,' 
replied he, * indeed it is.' " The resemblance between the two men was 
not confined to their admiration for that one line. Yet the difference be- 
tween them was greater : one was a rhetorician, the other a poet. Each 
delivered the depressing message of the age in his own way. 



392 Engliish Literature. 

horses who are used to the way, to the mountain of the 
Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top ; the road runs 
winding up it, commonly not six feet broad ; on one hand 
is the rock, with woods of pine trees hanging overhead ; 
on the other a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicu- 
lar, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that, some- 
times tumbling among the fragments of stone that have 
fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself 
down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is 
still made greater from the echo of the mountains on each 
side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most ro- 
mantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. 
Add to this the strange views made by the crags and 
cliffs on the other hand, the cascades that in many places 
throw themselves from the very summit down into the 
vale and river below, and many other particulars impossi- 
ble to describe, you will conclude we had no occasion to 
repent our pains." 

Even then Gray at times used the language of his day. 
Thus, Nov. 7, 1739 : "The winter was so far advanced as 
in great measure to spoil the beauty of the prospect ; how- 
ever, there was still somewhat fine remaining amidst the 
savageness and horror of the place." 

And Dec. 19 of the same year, he speaks of the Apen- 
nines as " not so horrid as the Alps, though pretty near as 
high." Horrid, of course, as with Addison and others, 
had not its present common meaning of odious, but rather 
that of awful. 

His warmest utterance is this, Nov. 16, 1739 : "I own I 
have not as yet met anywhere those grand and simple 
works of art that are to amaze one, and whose sight one 
is to be better for ; but those of nature have astonished 
me beyond expression. In our little journey up to the 
Grande Chartreuse, I do not remember to have gone ten 



English Literature. 393 

paces without an exclamation that there was no restrain- 
ing : not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is preg- 
nant with religion and poetry." 

Gray here tasted emotions which were scarcely to be 
shared with any one for many years. He was, in this re- 
spect, nearly half a century in advance of most of his 
contemporaries. * 

* See Gray's correspondence with Rev. Xorton Nicholls and Dr. Whar- 
ton, in 1*769, concerning the Enghsh lakes, which he was among the first 
to visit, and his "■ Tour in the Lakes." There was by this time general in- 
terest in the beauties of the landscapes. William Gilpin's " Observations 
and Artistical Remarks on the Picturesque Beauty of Various Parts of 
England, Wales, and Scotland," began to appear; the remarks on the Lake 
country in 1789, though " written about fifteen years before they were pub- 
lished. They were at first thrown together, warm from the subject, each 
evening, after the scene of the day had been presented " {vide preface). It 
was the MS. of Gilpin's " Tour down the Wye " which Gray annotated 
shortly before his death. 

We have seen that Defoe's " Tour through Britain " showed the writer's 
fondness for Gothic architecture. Mountains he enjoyed less. Thus, iii. 
258 (4th ed. 1748) : " I now entered Westmorelatid^ a county eminent only 
for being the Avildest, most barren, and frightful of any that I have passed 
over in England or in Wales. ... It must be owned, however, that here 
are some very pleasant manufacturing Towns, and consequently pop- 
ulous ;" yet from Lonsdale " we have a very fine Prospect of the Moun- 
tains at a vast Distance and of the beautiful Course of the River Lone, in 
a Valley far beneath us." Earlier, however, "As these hills were lofty, 
so they had an aspect of Terror. Here were no rich pleasant valleys 
between them, as among the Alps ; no Lead Mines and Veins of rich 
Ore, as in the Peak ; no Coal-pits, as in the Hills about Halifax, but all 
barren and wild, and of no Use either to Man or Beast." Of the '* Winan- 
der Mere " he says, merelj^, it " is famous for producing the char-fish. . , . 
It is a curious Fish, and, as a Dainty, is polled and sent far and near by 
Avay of Present." 

In the " Beauties of England and Wales," xv. pt. 2, p. 26, under West- 
moreland, "We find, indeed, a writer of considerable taste describing his 
visit to Winandermere, in 1748, with that glow of language which such 
scenes are calculated to suggest to persons living in cities or campaign 

17* 



394 English Literature, 

As Mr. Arnold has shown, Gray was a victim to the age 
in which he lived. We every day see men ruined by some 
fatal defect of character, by some overmastering vice, but 

countries. ' We came,' says he, ' upon a high promontory, that gave us a 
full view of the bright lake, which, spreading itself under us, in the midst 
of the mountains, presented one of the most glorious appearances that 
ever struck the eye of the traveller with transport." 

Vide^ also. Dr. Dalton's " Descriptive Poem : Addressed to Two Ladies 
on their Return from Viewing the Mines near Whitehaven," in Pearch's 
" Collection " (succeeding Dodsley's), vol. i. This poem was written in 
I'ZSS, After praising the beauty of the lake, the author says : 

" Supreme of mountains, Skiddaw, hail ! 
To whom all Britain sinks a vale ! 
Lo, his imperial brow I see 
From foul usurping vapours free ! 
'Twere glorious now his side to climb, 
Boldly to scale his top sublime," etc. 

Page 52, in the notes, see the enthusiasm of "the late ingenious Dr. 
Brown," in a letter to a friend. " On the opposite shore, you will find 
rocks -and cliffs of stupendous height hanging broken over the lake in 
horrible grandeur." The " Description of the Neighbourhood of Keswick " 
was pubhshed in 176*7; Hutchinson's "Excursion to the Lakes," in I'ZH; 
West's Guide, in 1778. 

Cumberland, in his " Memoirs " (Am. ed.), p. 195, speaking of a journey 
to the lakes of Cumberland with the Earl of Warwick, says, " He took 
with him Mr. Smith, well known to the pubUc for his elegant designs after 
nature in Switzerland, Italy, and elsewhere." 

A few German writers mention Haller's poem, " die Alpen," as a turning- 
point in the popular taste for mountains, but this is exaggeration {vide 
Adolf Prey's " Alb. von Haller," p. 174). Haller held the utilitarian ideas 
of his day and generation about mountains— thus : 

" Wo niehts, was nothig, fehlt, und nur was nutzet, bliiht. 
Der Berge wachsend Eis, der Pelsen steiler Wand 
Sind selbst zum niitzen da, und tranken das Geland." 

— " Poems," p. 44. 

This note has already swollen beyond all measure, or it would be well to 
quote passages from Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise," which fairly threw 
the mountains open to the world. Vide^ also, Petrarch's account of his 



English Literature. 395 

we are less disposed to acknowledge the irresistible in- 
fluence of an uncongenial time. Every age appears with 
a certain set of moulds into which it is necessary that 
those should fit who are to attain success, and those who 
fail to accommodate themselves to these conditions are 
thrown out. They may perform some work which their 
contemporaries will spurn, but which another generation 
may admire ; yet we shall always have to regret their in- 
completeness, their tragic loneliness. 

If all the world is a stage, a good many people are cast 
into the wrong parts, and Gray was a melancholy example 
of this uncongeniality. He was continually groping for a 
subject; and the whole endeavor of his life was to find 
something more truly poetical than the display of wit and 
reason. Goldsmith's remarks, already quoted, show this, 
and you will notice the dexterity with which he taunts 
those who take "pains to involve [the language] into 
pristine barbarity." The remote past was tabooed, and 
the obvious horrors of the tomb were chanted with cloy- 
ing monotony, while the elegiac beauty of Gray's short 
poem was almost the single valuable contribution to poe- 
try for many years.* The only other prominent example 
was Collins's beautiful odes (1746), which have that rare 
touch of classic beauty which is precision without 23ed- 
antry, beauty without exaggeration, simplicity without 
commonness. They had no following, however, in their 
own time. 

ascent of Mt. Yentoux, "De Rebus Familiaribus," lib. iv. ep. 1. See 
Quarterly Review^ July, 1882. 

* Gray is often mentioned as the first of English poets to return to 
old Norse themes (thus Gosse, " Graj," English Men of Letters Series, 
p. 163). But see Dryden's "Miscellany Poems," vi. 387 (ed. 1716), for a 
translation from the Hervarer Saga. This collection contains numerous 
old songs and ballads, and selections from Ben Jonson and Donne 



396 English Literature. 



CHAPTER IX. 

I. I HAVE already spoken of Goldsmith's taunts about 
those who formed the new school, and he frequently ex- 
pressed very genuine impatience with his contemporaries. 
Sometimes he seems to have written as if Dr. Johnson were 
looking over his shoulder, and there is an air of solemnity 
and authority about him which can scarcely have been 
natural. Yet his position on the conservative side in the 
literary controversies made him assume the tone of a teach- 
er, and his own work is full of the influences of his time. 
It is not surprising that he was vexed with the somewhat 
formless utterances of his fellow-bards, for in his hands 
the measure which had already been employed by so 
many poets acquired new grace. The " Traveller" (1765) 
leaves us cold, although there are good lines here and 
there — for we no longer seek " to find that happiest spot 
below," nor could we rest satisfied with the lingering 
optimism which persuaded Goldsmith that, 

" perhaps, if countries we compare, 
And estimate the blessings which they share, 
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find 
An equal portion dealt to all mankind ; 
As different good, by art or nature given, 
To different nations make their blessings even." 

And that, 

" every state to one lov'd blessing prone. 
Conforms and models life to that alone. 
Each to the favorite happiness attends, 
And spurns the plain that aims at other ends; 



English Literature. 397 

Till carried to excess in each domain, 
This favorite good begets peculiar pain." 

We seem to be remote from the new spirit of poetry 
as we read this rhymed thesis with which the simple- 
hearted, childlike, meriy young Irishman made his ap- 
pearance as a poet. In order to be esteemed he sup- 
pressed all naturalness and simplicity, and posed for a 
philosopher, with a full command of rhetorical devices. 
The "Deserted Village" (1769), four years later, sounds 
another note. The poem has delighted nearly all its 
readers, for with exactness of form, and a form, too, gen- 
erally associated in our minds with artificiality, it has 
pathos, simplicity, love of nature, and little touches that 
no one can be wholly insensible to. Indeed, it is a most 
fortunate thing for us that the heroic verse, which has 
been so unjustly decried, contains a poem so full of the 
very beauties which are often hastily denied it. 

It also bears marks of the influence of his romantic 
contemporaries — e. g. : 

" Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where ivild Altama murmurs to their woe.'''' 
And, 

*' Farewell, and ! where'er thy voice be tried, 

On Tortious cliff's, or Pamham.arca's side.'''' 

Yet, while the poem is full of the sentimentality which 
was making its appearance in literature, it is amusing to 
see how wholly unconscious Goldsmith's reason was of 
the changes in men's thoughts and feelings. An appeal 
to his inquiry into "The Present State of Polite Learn- 
ing" (I'ZSO) may be hardly fair, because an appeal to a 
poet's arguments in support of his views is tolerably cer- 
tain to be misleading ; but here we have Goldsmith's 
views expressed very clearly. " Rousseau, of Geneva ;" 
he says, " a professed man-hater ; or, more properly speak- 



398 English Literature. 

ing, a philosopher enraged with one half of mankind, be- 
cause they unavoidably make the other half unhappy. 
Such sentiments are generally the result of much good 
nature and little experience." But more striking than 
this is the following ; he is speaking of the writers of 
France, who, he says, "have also of late fallen into a 
method of considering every part of art and science as 
arising from simple principles. The success of Mon- 
tesquieu, and one or two more, has induced all the sub- 
ordinate ranks of genius into vicious imitation. To this 
end they turn to our view that side of the subject which 
contributes to support their hypothesis, while the objec- 
tions are generally passed over in silence. Thus one 
universal system rises from a partial representation of 
the question, a whole is concluded from a part, a book 
appears entirely new, and the fancy-built fabric is styled 
for a short time very ingenious. In this manner we have 
seen, of late, almost every subject in morals, natural his- 
tory, economy, and commerce treated ; subjects naturally 
proceeding on many principles, and some even opposite to 
each other, are all taught to proceed along the line of 
systematic simplicity, and continue, like other agreeable 
falsehoods, extremely pleasing till they are detected." 

I quote this long passage, not for the purpose of cast- 
ing scorn on poor Goldsmith's hack-work — for to con- 
demn him for faulty philosophy would be scarcely wiser 
than condemning Montesquieu for his bad poems — but to 
show the average conservative view of Goldsmith's time 
regarding the one great step which science was then 
making towards simpliiS cation. Let us not exult too 
loudly : it is still possible to find mixed companies in 
which there are people who shudder if they hear Dar- 
winism mentioned, and who have prejudices against the 
word evolution. Let us call it growth, and no one will be 



English Literature. 399 

pained ; it was this notion of growth that he found fault 
with for being too simple. Yet no one reads Goldsmith 
for his views on any subject. They were as little a part 
of him as was his wig, and like that article they bore 
marks of conventionality. In his " Vicar of Wakefield," 
for instance, there is no faintest trace of the pompousness 
that lay heavy on the conservative part of his generation. 
Goldsmith is as simple, as winning, as delightful as a 
child, and his book is consequently one of the master- 
pieces of English literature. The fact that it described 
the life of a humble family, with ordinary incidents, and 
especially that it described the Vicar's career in a prison, 
excited some opposition. The book was looked upon as 
" low " by the fashionable critics.* Nowhere, perhaps, 
did it have more influence than on the Continent, and 
especially in Germany. How much Goethe was moved 
by it when, four years later. Herder read him the Ger- 
man translation, we may see in his " Wahrheit und Dich- 
tung," bk. X. Yet, while the story remains unrivalled, 
we may notice that it belongs in many respects to the 
period in which it was written. . In execution it is a model 
for all time ; in plan and aim it belongs to its own day. 
Its idyllic tone was essentially that which we frequent- 
ly observe in literature before the French Revolution. 
There are the mutterings of that storm, too, in the de- 
nunciations of the rich which are to be found in the 

* Goldsmith himself said in the preface : " In this age of opulence and 
refinement whom can such a character please ? Such as are fond of high 
life will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fireside," 
etc. 

Mr.Wm. Black, in his ''Goldsmith" (English Men of Letters Series), says, 
"Mme. Riccoboni, to whom Burke had sent the book, wrote to Garrick, 
*' Le plaidoyer en faveur des voleurs, des petits larrons, des gens de mau- 
vaises moeurs, est fort eloigne de me plaire.' " 



40O English Literature. 

novel, and the appeal for sounder conduct {vide chapters 
xix. and xxvii.). 

Notice, too, the literary taste of the day (chap, ix.) : 
" The two ladies threw my girls quite into the shade ; 
for they would talk of nothing but high life and high- 
lived company ; with other fashionable topics, such as 
pictures, taste, Shakspeare, and the musical glasses." 
And (chap, xviii.), "As I was pretty much unacquainted 
with the present state of the stage, I demanded who were 
the present theatrical writers in vogue, who were the 
Drydens and Otways of the day — ' I fancy, sir,' cried the 
player, ' few of our modern dramatists would think them- 
selves much honoured by being compared to the writers 
you mention. Dryden and Rowe's manner, sir, are quite 
out of fashion ; our taste has gone back a whole century ; 
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and all the plays of Shakspeare, 
are the only things that go down !' 'How,' cried I, 'is it 
possible the present age can be pleased with that anti- 
quated dialect, that obsolete humour, those overcharged 
characters, which abound in the works you mention ?' 
'Sir,' returned my companion, 'the public think nothing 
about dialect, or humour, or character ; for that is none 
of their business, they only go to be amused, and find 
themselves happy w^hen they can enjoy a pantomime, 
under the sanction of Jonson's or Shakspeare's name.' 
' So then, I suppose,' cried I, ' that our modern dramatists 
are rather imitators of Shakspeare than of nature.' 'To 
say the truth,' returned my companion, 'I don't know 
that they imitate anything at all ; nor indeed does the 
public require it of them : it is not the composition of 
the piece, but the number of starts and attitudes that 
may be introduced into it, that starts applause.' " 

This Shaksperian revival, which was furthered as much 
by Garrick as by any one man, did but little in the way 



English Litei^ature. 401 

of bringing valuable additions to the dramatic literature 
of England, but it shows that the interest in the neglect- 
ed past was spreading further and further. We have seen 
that there was an edition of Spenser in 1715, followed 
by. another thirty years later. About the middle of the 
century, Hawkins reprinted several old plays. Johnson 
himself brought out his edition of Shakspere in 1765. 
And in the Adventurer we find Warton freely discussing 
the works of the Elizabethan poets. The essays of Y. 
Knox (1777) contain touching allusions to the changes in 
men's tastes, echoes of Dr. Johnson's style and opinion. 
Thus (N^o. XV.): "There are several books very popular 
in the present age, among the youthful and the inexperi- 
enced, which have a sweetness that palls on the taste, and 
a grandeur that swells to a bloated turgidity. Such are 
the writings of some modern Germans. 'The Death of 
Abel,'* is generally read, and preferred by many to all 
the productions of Greece, Rome, and England. The 
success of this work has given rise to others on the same 
plan, inferior to this in its real merits, and labouring un- 
der the same fault of redundant decoration. What others 
may feel, I know not ; but I would no more be obliged 
to read the works of Gesner repeatedly, than to make a 
frequent meal on the honey-comb." Again (No. xlvii.), 
" The antiquarian spirit, which was once confined to in- 
quiries concerning the manners, the buildings, the records, 
and the coins of the ages that preceded us, has now ex- 
tended itself to those poetical compositions which were 
popular among our forefathers, but which have gradually 
sunk into oblivion through the decay of language, and 
the prevalence of a correct and polished taste. Books 
printed in the black letter are sought for with the same 

* Numerous editious in England, one with Stothard's plates ; and many 
in France. 



402 English Literature, 

avidity with which the English antiquary peruses a moni- 
umental inscription, or treasures up a Saxon piece of 
money. The popular ballad, composed by some illiterate 
minstrel, and which has been handed down by tradition 
for several centuries, is rescued from the hands of the 
vulgar, to obtain a place in the collection of the man of 
taste. Yerses, which a few years past were thought 
worthy the attention of children only, or of the lowest 
and rudest orders, are now admired for that artless sim- 
plicity, which once obtained the name of coarseness and 
vulgarity. . . . Every lover of poetry is pleased with the 
judicious selections of Percy, though he gives himself 
little concern about dates. . . . The more antiquarian 
taste in poetry, or the admiration of had poetry merely 
because it is ancient, is certainly absurd. It is more dif- 
ficult to discover the meaning of many of our old poets, 
disguised as it is in an obsolete and uncouth phraseology, 
than to read an elegant Greek or Latin author. Such 
study is, indeed, not unfrequently like raking in a dunghill 
for pearls, and gaining the labour only for one's pains. 

" Our earlier poets, many of whose names are deservedly 
forgotten, seem to have thought that rhyme was poetry ; 
and even this constituent grace they applied with ex- 
treme negligence. It was, however, good enough for its 
readers ; ... it has had its day, and the antiquary must 
not despise us, if we cannot pursue it with patience. He 
who delights in all such reading as is never read, may de- 
rive some pleasure from the singularity of his taste ; but 
he ought still to respect the judgment of mankind, which 
has consigned to oblivion the works he admires. While 
he pores unmolested on Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and 
Occleve, let him not censure our obstinacy in adhering to 
Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope. 

" In perusing the antiquated pages of our English bards, 



English Literature. 403 

we sometimes find a passage whicli has comparative merit, 
and which shines with the greater lustre, because it is 
surrounded with deformity. ... It is true, that those 
old ballads, which are in the mouths of peasants on both 
sides the Tweed, have something in them irresistibly cap- 
tivating. Vulgar, coarse, inelegant, they yet touch the 
heart. . . . Addison first gained them the notice of schol- 
ars, by his praises of ' Chevy Chase,' " etc. The whole 
essay is worthy of attention. 

Knox, No. cxxix., also says: " I think it is not difiicult to 
perceive, that the admirers of English poetry are divided 
into two parties. The objects of their love are, perhaps, 
of equal beauty, though they greatly differ in their air, 
their dress, the turn of their features, and their complex- 
ion. On one side are the lovers and imitators of Spenser 
and Milton ; and on the other, those of Dryden, Boileau, 
and Pope." In the same paper Knox regrets that blank- 
verse was the object of " an unreasonable prejudice," and 
that Dr. Johnson should have treated " the illustrious Gray 
with singular harshness, in a work which contains very 
candid accounts of a Sprat and a Yalden, a Duke and a 
Broome." Thus it is evident that the condition of things 
was pretty well understood at the time. Indeed, we 
should naturally expect that it must have been so, just as 
we know that the lightning never flashes in a clear sky. 
The clouds gather with greater or less celerity, and with 
more or less remote muttering ; it is this distant forebod- 
ing that we are now studying. 

Another excellent proof that a change was impending 
is the unanimity of the conservative people in asserting 
that a change would be dangerous if it were not fortu- 
nately impossible. This state of mind found expression 
in the writings and utterances of Dr. Johnson. Inasmuch 
as his wit made his sayings memorable, he is now often 



404 English Liter at ure. 

looked upon as a mere creature of prejudice ; and often 
we take for a simple expression of personal whim what 
was simply the best statement of the thought of his time — 
not, of course, of all the thought, but of what we may call 
the conservative thought of his time. He led his contem- 
poraries, but, to make a homely comparison, he led it as 
the foremost of the flock — foremost, to be sure, yet one 
of the flock. There is scarcely one of his views which 
has not been riddled by later opinion. All that he held 
dearest has been destroyed, and the process began even 
before he seemed to have made irrevocably fast the laws 
of literature. Thus (Boswell, July 9, 1763), " I mentioned 
to him that Dr. Adam Smith, in his lectures upon composi- 
tion, when I studied under him in the College of Glasgow, 
had maintained the same opinion strenuously, and I re- 
peated some of his arguments. — Johnson: 'Sir, I was 
once in company with Smith, and we did not take to each 
other ; but had I known that he loved rhyme as much as 
you tell me he does, I should have hugged him.' " He 
spoke with intelligence about Thomson, saying : " His is 
one of the works in which blank verse seems properly 
used. . . . His description of extended scenes and general 
effects bring before us the whole magnificence of nature, 
whether pleasing or dreadful. The gaiety of Spring, the 
splendour of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the 
horror of Winter, take in their turns possession of the 
mind. The poet leads us through the appearances of 
things as they are successively varied by the vicissitudes 
of the year, and imparts to us so much of their enthusiasm, 
that our thoughts expand with his imagery and kindle 
with his sentiments. . . . His diction is in the highest de- 
gree florid and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his 
images and thoughts 'both their lustre and their shade;' 
such as invests them with splendour, through which, per- 



English Literature. 405. 

haps, they are not always easily discerned. It is too ex- 
uberant, and sometimes may be charged with filling the 
ear more than the mind." In his preface to his edition of 
Shakspere (1765), Dr. Johnson puts away the notion of 
the unities into the lumber-chamber, nearly thirty years 
after he had written his play, in which he had closely ob- 
served them.* Yet about Milton he could write strangely. 
We feel here that we are listening to a man with whom it 
is impossible to sympathize, and one who is moved by 
prejudice. It is not hard to find sufficient ground for his 
prejudice, from what we have seen of the way in which 
Milton was regarded by those of Johnson's contempora- 
ries whom he despised, and whom he lashed over Milton's 
back. Even more violent was his onslaught on the reviv- 
ing interest in ballad literature and on Ossian: 

"Mr. James Macpherson, — I received your foolish and 
impudent letter. Any violence offered to me I shall do 
my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself, the 
law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred 
from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a 
ruffian. What would you have me retract? I thought 
your book an imposture ; I think it an imposture still. 
For this opinion I have given my reasons to the j)ublic, 
which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your 
abilities, since your ' Homer,' f are not so formidable ; and 



* So that even before Lessing he drove out the unities ; but by this time 
they had no such real existence in England as they had on the Continent. 
Lillo and his followers had slain them. Johnson wrote about Shakspere, 
however, in the old-fashioned way when he blamed him for omitting " op- 
portunities of instructing or dehghting," and for making " no just distri- 
bution of good or evil." 

f A translation of Homer into English prose (2 vols. 4to., 17*73 ; 2d 
ed. the same year). This was an attempt to work over Homer in the 
rhythm and style of Ossian. The book was generally derided. 



4o6 English Literature. 

what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not 
to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You 
may print this if you will." So he wrote, and "he pro- 
vided himself with a weapon both of the defensive and 
offensive kind. It was an oak-plant of a tremendous size ; 
a plant, I say, and not a shoot or branch, for it had a root, 
which being trimmed to the size of a large orange, became 
the head of it. Its height was upward of six feet, and 
from about an inch in diameter at the lower end, increased 
to near three ; this he kept in his bedchamber, so near the 
chair in which he constantly sat as to be within reach." 
This sticl?:, which overshadows the one which Ambrose 
Philips hung up at Buttons's to beat Pope with, was as 
powerless against Ossian as rods are when used in the way 
of disseminating a love of literature ; and Ossian, as we 
shall shortly notice, swept over continental Europe like a 
fog from the northern seas. 

In fact, as Hettner says. Dr. Johnson's roots ran back to 
the time of Queen Anne ; he inherited the opinions of that 
time, and he lived long enough to see in a flourishing con- 
dition many opinions that were distinctly opposed to the 
earlier well-established principles. Thus, besides his im- 
mortally unread tragedy, he wrote his essays after the 
model of the Spectator^ and in the JRcm%bler gave the Eng- 
lish people many curious sermons. Remember, however, 
that in so doing he took the only method known of reach- 
ing the public ; he was not trying to make himself over 
into a Queen Anne writer in the deliberate way in which 
people now build Queen Anne houses. Let us take the 
Mamhler, and see Dr. Johnson laying down the law for 
our ancestors in the middle of the last century. As Mr. 
Leslie Stephen puts it : " With Shakespeare, or Sir Thom- 
as Browne, or Jeremy Taylor, or Milton, man is contem- 
plated in his relations to the universe ; he is in presence 



English Literature. 407 

of eternity and infinity ; life is a brief dream ; we are 
ephemeral actors in a vast drama ; heaven and hell are 
behind the veil of phenomena ; at every step our friends 
vanish into the vast abyss of ever-present mystery. To 
all such thoughts the writers of the eighteenth century 
seemed to close their eyes as resolutely as possible. They 
do not, like Sir Thomas Browne, delight to lose themselves 
in an Oh ! Altitudo ! or to snatch a solemn joy from the 
giddiness which follows a steady gaze into the infinite. 
The greatest men among them, a Swift or a Johnson, 
have indeed a sense — perhaps a really stronger sense than 
Browne or Taylor — of the pettiness of our lives and the 
narrow limits of our knowledge. ISTo great man could 
ever be without it. But the awe of the infinite and the 
unseen does not induce them to brood over the mysterious, 
and find utterance for bewildered musings on the inscru- 
table enigma. 

"It is felt only in a certain habitual sadness which 
clouds their whole tone of thought. They turn their 
backs on the infinite, and abandon the effort at a solution. 
Their eyes are fixed on the world around them, and they 
regard as foolish and presumptuous any one who dares to 
contemplate the great darkness. The expression of this 
sentiment in literature is a marked disposition to turn 
aside from pure speculation, combined with a deep inter- 
est in moral and social laws. The absence of any deeper 
speculative ground makes the immediate practical ques- 
tions of life all the more interesting. We know not what 
we are, nor whither we are going, nor whence we come ; 
but we can, by the help of common sense, discover a suf- 
ficient share of moral maxims for our guidance in life, and 
we can analyze human passions, and discover what are the 
moving forces of society, without going back to first prin- 
ciples. Knowledge of human nature, as it actually pre- 



4o8 English Literature, 

sented itself in the shifting scene before them, and a vivid 
appreciation of the importance of the moral law, are the 
staple of the best literature of the time. As ethical spec- 
ulation was prominent in the philosophy, the enforcement 
of ethical principles is the task of those who were inclined 
to despise philosophy. When a creed is dying, the impor- 
tance of preserving the moral law naturally becomes a 
pressing consideration with all strong natures " (English 
Thought," ii. 370, SVl). 

This intelligent statement does not cover all the ground, 
because, for one thing, the causes which lead to the differ- 
ences between two different periods of civilization are 
enormously complex, and it is hard, if not actually im- 
possible, for any one observer to see them all. Yet the de- 
cay of faith, and the consequent need of enforcing moral 
teaching, do not fully explain the alteration in men's 
minds ; enthusiasm died out, because, from its very nat- 
ure, it cannot last long, and the task that lay before the 
people of the last century was the establishment of civili- 
zation, and this was a practical question. The Renaissance 
was of the nature of the conquest of unknown lands, and 
its work was done with the fire and enthusiasm that con- 
quest requires ; in the last century, these newly con- 
quered regions had to be brought under the municipal 
law, and this is a process in which enthusiasm is apt to 
languish. 

Where Addison spoke with grace and lightness, John- 
son spoke with pomp and elaboration, and with a certain 
despairing melancholy ; but the main effort of the two 
men was the same. We do not nowadays read the JRcmi- 
hler with delight ; in fact, we do not read it at all. What 
we enjoy in the Spectator is not its moral lessons, which 
were dear to those for whom they were written. We en- 
joy the eternally delightful humour with which Addison 



English Literature. 409 

sketched certain characters, but Johnson's humour is less 
easy. " Criticism," he tells us [Bamhler, No. 16), 

"... was the eldest daughter of Labour and of Truth ; she was, at her 
birth, committed to the care of Justice, and brought up by her in the 
Palace of Wisdom, Being soon distinguished by the celestials, for her 
uncommon qualities, she was appointed the Governess of Fancy, and em- 
powered to beat time to the chorus of the Muses, when they sung before 
the throne of Jupiter," 

No. 74 : " He that gives himself up to his own fancy, and converses with 
none but such as he hires to lull him on the down of absolute authority, 
to soothe him with obsequiousness, and regale him with flattery, soon 
grows too slothful for the labour of contest, too tender for the asperity of 
contradiction, and too delicate for the coarseness of truth ; a little op- 
position offends, a little restraint enrages, and a little difficulty perplexes 
him," etc. 

No. 126: "Sir, — As you propose to extend your regard to the minute- 
ness of decency, as well as to the dignity of science, I cannot forbear to 
lay before you a mode of persecution by which I have been exiled to 
taverns and coffee-houses, and deterred from entering the doors of my 
friends. 

"Among the ladies who please themselves with splendid furniture, or 
elegant entertainment, it is a practice very common to ask every guest 
how he likes the carved work of the cornice, or the figures of the tapestry ; 
the china at the table, or the plate on the sideboard ; and on all occasions 
to inquire his opinion of their judgment and their choice. Melania has 
laid her new Avatch in the window nineteen times, that she may desire me 
to look upon it. Calista has an ai't of dropping her snuff-box by drawing 
out her handkerchief that when I pick it up I may admire it; and Ful- 
gentia has conducted me by mistake into the wrong room, at every visit I 
have paid since her picture was put into a new frame." 

Certainly Dr. Johnson is not always associated in our 
minds with this airy satire of social foibles, and it must 
be acknowledged that much of the Rambler is but a cold 
imitation of the graceful lightness of much of the Spectator. 
No greater tribute could be paid to Addison and Steele 
than the fact that Dr. Johnson, in order to reach the pub- 
lic, had to follow, heavily shod as he was with all the 

18 



410 English Literature. 

learning and conservative prejudice of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, in their light footsteps. He maintains their most 
firmly rooted opinions with great vigor. His own method 
reads like a petrifaction of their forms of expression. In 
No. 32 we are told, or at least our ancestors were told, 
that " to oppose the devastations of Famine, who scat- 
tered the ground everywhere with carcasses. Labour came 
down upon earth." In No. 38, that " whosoever shall look 
heedfuliy upon those who are eminent for their riches, 
will not think their condition such that he should hazard 
his quiet, and much less his virtue to obtain it." In No. 
41, that " we owe to memory not only the increase of our 
knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but 
many other intellectual pleasures." It is not necessary to 
quote the harrowing tale, in No. 73, which contains this 
useful lesson : " Let no man from this time suffer his fe- 
licity to depend on the death of his aunt." It should be 
said in justice, however, that this phrase is more than half 
ironical. Johnson's views on literature, as expressed in 
the Rambler^ were far more rigid than those of his great 
predecessors. AYe have seen with what contempt he spoke 
of those who cared for antique poetry. Addison was con- 
tinually getting out of the pulpit to praise something 
which his taste told him was good. Johnson, on the other 
hand, brought all his wit and learning to crush every at- 
tempt at novelty. Science, too, fared no better at his hands 
than did romantic poetry. Thus in the Rambler, No. 24 : 
" When a man employs himself upon remote and unneces- 
sary subjects, and wastes his life upon questions which 
cannot be resolved, and of which the solution would con- 
duce very little to the advancement of happiness ; when 
he lavishes his hours in calculating the weight of the 
terraqueous globe, or in adjusting successive systems of 
worlds beyond the reach of the telescope ; he may be 



English Literature. 41 1 

very properly recalled from his excursions by this precept 
[know thyself], and reminded that there is a nearer being 
with which it is his duty to be more acquainted, and from 
which his attention has been withheld by studies, to which 
he has no other motive than vanity or curiosity." There- 
upon he proceeds to draw the character of a scientific 
man whom he brands with the name of Gelidus. This 
worthless person displays the harm wrought by science, 
by being " insensible to every spectacle of distress and 
unmoved by the loudest call of social nature." It is, 
perhaps, worthy of a moment's notice that the objection 
nowadays to men like the unhappy Gelidus is, that they 
are, if anything, too unpractical, and are prone to exhibit 
a sentimental sympathy with the sufferings of others. 

Johnson also lacked sympathy with collectors, as he 
showed in Xo. 82, which contains an imaginary confession 
of one of them : " I now turned my thoughts to exotics 
and antiquities. Having been always a lover of geography, 
I determined to collect the maps dra^VTi in rude and bar- 
barous times, before any regular surveys, or just observa- 
tions." " I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in but- 
terflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribes. I 
then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and 
obtained by this easy method, most of the grubs and in- 
sects, which land, air, or water, can supply. I have three 
species of earthworms not known to the naturalists, have 
discovered a new ephemera, and can show four wasps that 
were taken torpid in their native quarters." One tenant 
brought him only " two horse-flies and those of little more 
than the common size ; and I was upon the brink of seiz- 
ing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole 
in his way, for which he was not only forgiven but re- 
warded." He collected marbles from remote regions, 
curiosities, a fur cap of the Czar and a boot of Charles of 



412 English Literature, 

Sweden. For the sake of tlie Harleian collection " I mort- 
gaged my land, and purchased thirty medals, which I could 
never find before ;" and now he is ruined. The mere cata- 
logue of his motley tastes seems to show the inaccuracy 
of the portrait, which may well be a caricature of Horace 
Walpole. 

And again in No. 177, Hirsutus collects books in black- 
letter ; Ferratus, copper coins ; " Cantilenus turned all his 
thoughts upon old ballads, for he considered them as the 
genuine records of the national tastes. He offered to show 
me a copy of the ' Children in the Wood,' which he firmly 
believed to be of the first edition, and by the help of which 
the text might be freed from corruptions, if this age of bar- 
barity had any claim to such favours from him." Johnson's 
sole consolation is that these people were capable of noth- 
ing better, and were at least kept out of active mischief.* 

Let us remember, however, that in its day the Hamhler 
was far from popular. Its circulation was rather less than 
five hundred copies ; it was only after Johnson had be- 
come famous that they were much read. Ten editions 
that were published in his lifetime made up for the earlier 
neglect of the essays.f 

* Johnson's feeling about research was the common property of his day, 
and not mere personal whim. Compare the " Dissertation concerning the 
^ra of Ossian :" " Inquiries into the antiquities of nations afford more 
pleasure than any real advantage to mankind. ... It is then [in a well- 
ordered community] historians begin to write, and public transactions to 
be worthy remembrance." 

And see Dr. Hugh Blair's remark, in his " Critical Dissertation on the 
Poems of Ossian :" " History, when it treats of remote and dark ages, is 
seldom very instructive. The beginnings of society in every country are 
involved in fabulous confusion ; and though they were not, they would fur- 
nish few events worth recording." See, too, Taller^ No. 216. 

f Cumberland, " Memoirs " (Am.ed.), p. 183, says: "His Ramblers are 
in everybody's hands, about them opinions vary." 



English Literature, , 413 

It is scarcely fair to exhume Johnson's *' Irene "-to show 
his respect for the models of his day. There is but one 
opinion possible about the tragedy ; that was formed a 
century ago, and it is one of the few that have not been 
revised, but it is not generally known, perhaps, how very 
poor the play really is. For instance : 

" Leon. Awake, Demetrius, from this dismal dream, 
Sinlv not beneatli imaginary sorrows ; 
Call to your aid your courage, and your wisdom ; 
Tiiink on tlie sudden change of human scenes, 
Think on the various accidents of war ; 
Think on the mighty power of awful virtue ; 
Think on that Providence that guards the good," 

And, in the next scene : 

" Has silence pressed her seal upon his lips ? 
Does adamantine faith invest his heart ? 
Will he not bend beneath a tyrant's frown ? 
Will he not melt before ambition's fire ? 
Will he not soften in a friend's embrace 
Or flow dissolving in a woman's tears." 

Similar three and four barrelled sentences are to be found 
in almost every scene. 

The "Rasselas" is, in form, an amplification of the 
Oriental apologues in the Spectator, but it is as complete 
a " criticism of life " as one will find in any English work 
of the time. Johnson's preface to his Shakspere, although, 
as we have seen, not untinged with antique notions, was 
of service to letters. His " Lives of the Poets " must have 
had, on the other hand, a bad influence. His unsympa- 
thetic treatment of Gray and his lack of appreciation of 
Milton doubtless affected a vast number of readers. It 
would be unfair to load his shoulders with all the bigotry 
with which the English nation long regarded much of the 
work of foreigners ; he but gave expression to wide- 



414 English Literature. 

spread prejudices. Yet his wit and his authority must 
have strengthened very much the raw English prejudice 
against the great French writers of the last century. 
" For anything I can see, all foreigners are fools," was 
one of his remarks. The opinion he expressed to Boswell 
about Rousseau and Voltaire will occur to every one. He 
told Stockdale that Voltaire and D'Alembert were child- 
ish authors. 

In looking at Johnson's whole value, we pardon these 
eccentric utterances, and it is by no means a complete de- 
scription of him to say of him nothing more than that he 
encouraged philistinism, any more than it would be to say 
that he was hot-tempered, but the discussion of his many 
better -known qualities falls outside of our present pur- 
pose. With all his faults, he is one of the best-loved men 
in the history of letters, and this is due, not to his writ- 
ings, but to the faithful record which Boswell made of 
the evenings when the great man folded his legs and had 
his talk out. He could have little thought that posterity 
would yawn over his moral writings, sniff at his witty 
criticisms, and coolly respect but a small part of his poe- 
try, leaving the rest unread. Once, it will be remembered, 
when some one regretted that he had not given his atten- 
tion to law, in which case he would doubtless have risen 
to be Lord High Chancellor, Johnson impatiently turned 
the conversation, evidently filled with regret that he had 
frittered his life away with so little to show for it. But 
what is the ephemeral reputation of a Lord High Chan- 
cellor, which scarcely outlasts that of an actor and soon 
becomes a mere vague rumor, with that which Johnson 
now holds throughout the English-speaking world? We 
may say English-speaking, because people of other nations 
repay the contempt he felt for their grandfathers, and are 
far from understanding why we like him. 



English Literature. 415 

Dr. Johnson's reputation, then, is due to Boswell's book. 
His reputation as a wit, instead of being simply a tradition, 
surviving, like Dryden's, on a meagre handful of anecdotes, 
and kept alive, like that of most good talkers, by having 
all the old stories of centuries fathered on him alone — in- 
stead of that, I say, we hear him as he lived and spoke. 
What makes Boswell's " Life " so valuable is that he did 
not iron all the eccentricities out of Johnson, that he did 
not file and polish him into a faultless and bloodless hero, 
as photographers nowadays burnish from our portraits 
all the lines which time and experience have marked upon 
our face.* Hannah More "besought his [Boswell's] ten- 
derness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend, 
and begged he would mitigate some of his asperities. He 
said, roughly, ' He would not cut off his claws, nor make a ^ 
tiger a cat to please anybody.' " 

Boswell's reward for his honesty will not surprise 
thoughtful people. Inasmuch as he put down instances 
of his own folly and of the rebuffs he drew from John- 
son, it has been the fashion to decry him for a simpleton ; 
but few sensible men, however, have given so much pleas- 
ure to an ungrateful world. He really opens the door for 
us and lets us overhear Johnson expressing in his talk all 
the opposition that conservatives felt against the modern 
spirit that was then rising on every hand. There were 
many innovators ; for society had become very complex, 
and there were countless influences at work preparing for 
the second Renaissance, the Romantic movement. 

We have seen in what way much of the new spirit grew, 

* Perhaps as marked an instance of the conventional treatment is the 
authorized life of Day, the author of "Sandford and Merton." His life, as 
we may see in Miss Edgeworth's meufioirs of her father, was a whirl of 
eccentricity, but in the authorized memoir he is as unreal and pallid as a 
bust with a toga around its neck. 



41 6 Enylish Literature. 

and how the impending political revolution was antici- 
pated in literature by the deposition of crowned heads 
from their pre-eminence and the exaltation of the citizen. 
We have seen the awakening of an interest in the past ; 
this continued, and was one of the most productive of the 
many influences at work. This need not surprise us ; the 
key of the so-called classical method was the imitation of 
poets of acknowledged merit. Horace, Seneca,Vergil, had 
been copied and recopied. Gottsched and Bodmer agreed 
in urging imitation as the one secret of success ; they dif- 
fered only in the poets they suggested for models. With 
time there had grown up a new love for the forgotten 
past, and once-neglected poets now began to be regarded 
as authorities. We have seen how echoes of Milton re- 
verberated through the whole century, and any one who 
turns over the collections of verse of that period will find 
numberless attempts to reproduce Spenser's stanza. Beat- 
tie only followed what was already a fashion when he 
adopted that form for his curious refutation of infidelity 
in the " Minstrel." The new interest in Shakspere was 
part of the same movement.* 

* Lord Lansdowne made over the "Merchant of Venice" (lYOl) with 
music ; Otway, " Romeo and Juliet " into " Caius Marius ;" Gildon, " Meas- 
ure for Measure;" Gibber, "Richard the Third," I'/OO; Dennis, "Merry 
Wives," 1702; Leveridge, " Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1716; Dennis, 
"Coriolanus" 1721; Charles Johnson, "As You Like It," 1723; Duke 
of Buckingham, "Julius Cffisar" into two plays, 1722; Worsdale, "Tam- 
ing of the Shrew," 1736; J. Miller, "Much Ado About Nothing," 1737; 
Gibber, "King John," 1744; Lampe, " Midsummer-Night's Dream" into 
a sort of operetta, 1745. 

Garrick, though abused by Lamb for falseness to Shakspere, did much 
in the way of restoring the original text. The story runs that Avhen Gar- 
rick was acting Macbeth according to the original text, Quin asked him 
where he got all that fine language. It is to be remembered that Steele 
did not quote the original text in the Tatler, and we should consider how 



English Literature. 417 

• II. A wholly new voice was heard in Ossian (1762), the 
effect of which was, however, more distinctly marked on 
the Continent than in England.* The authenticity of these 
poems is still a matter of grave doubt. At the best, they 
were versions of meagre relics, composed in the rhetorical 
language that marks much of the tumid blank verse of 
the last century, with imitations of the Old Testament 
and of certain old Irish and Scotch poems. Macpherson's 
curious dependence on his contemporaries, which he ex- 
hibited in almost every line, probably endeared him to his 
first readers. The very vagueness of his descriptions of 
nature seemed like vivid accuracy to those who were but 
just beginning to enjoy the sight of scenery ; now, on the 
other hand, it is but an additional proof of Macpherson's 
forgery. f But, such as they were — and just what they 
were still remains uncertain — they had a success which 
was incontestable. They were put into German, and were 
often reprinted in that country in their English dress. 
They were translated into French and into Italian, and 
were much admired by Napoleon, J among others ; and 
versions appeared in Spanish, Polish, and Dutch. 

seldom we nowadays, more than one hundred years since Garrick's prime, 
see the plays without great alteration. 

* As Taine says, Macpherson " collected fragments of legends, plastered 
over the whole an abundance of eloquence and rhetoric, and created a Celtic 
Homer, Ossian, who, with Oscar, Malvina, and his whole troop, made the 
tour of Europe, and, about 1830, ended by furnishing baptismal names for 
French grisettes SLud perritquiers.'''' — "English Lit.," ii. 220. 

f "Poor moaning, monotonous Macpherson," as Carlyle called him in 
his review of Taylor's " German Poetry," — " Essays," ii, 443. 

X Have not his proclamations, addresses to his troops, etc., an Ossianic 
sound ? He also liked " Werther." Goethe said to Henry Crabbe Rob- 
inson ("Diary," ii. 106), "It was the contrast with his own nature. He 
loved soft and melancholy music. Werther was among his books at St. 
Helena." But is not this statement too modesi ? Napoleon liked " Wer- 

18* 



41 8 English Literature. 

In England they from the first met violent opposition. 
Dr. Johnson, who detested them because they were Scotch, 
as well as because they were animated by all that he most 
despised in the new literature, was their bitterest opponent. 
His view of them may be gathered from the letter quoted 
above. The Scotch, however, rose like a man in their be- 
half. An ardent patriotism sufficed to convince them that 
Macpherson was a mere translator of their old epics, and 
no charlatan. Dr. Blair, for instance, undertook to show 
by copious arguments that Ossian was a Scotch Homer, 
and how, by virtue of his genius, he had complied with 
every one of Aristotle's laws : 

" The duration of the action in Fingal, is much shorter 
than in the Iliad or ^neid, but sure there may be shorter 
as well as longer heroic poems ; and if the authority of 
Aristotle be also required for this, he says expressly, that 
the epic composition is indefinite as to the time of its 
duration. Accordingly the action of the Iliad lasts only 
forty-seven days, whilst that of the ^neid is continued 
for more than a year." And, on the next page, " Homer's 
art in magnifying the character of Achilles has been uni- 
versally admired. Ossian certainly shows no less art in ag- 
grandizing Fingal." " The story which is the foundation 
of the Iliad is in itself as simple as that of Fingal," etc. 

Yet Johnson's opposition to the poems was effective at 
home, although it had no influence abroad, where the read- 
ers expected roughness in a twofold translation. What 
the influence of the book was Ave may see in the second 
part of Goethe's " Werther" (1774), in Klopstock, and in 
many of Goethe's early odes ; and Chateaubriand has told 

ther " because it came out when he was young. Napoleon, it must be re- 
membered, once came near committing suicide. Vide also " Eckei'mann," 
iii. 28 (Jan. 2, 1824). 



English Literature. 419 

us how he was delighted by the fictitious bard. Germany 
especially was moved by the Ossianic spirit. That coun- 
try was then awakening to the consciousness of its powers, 
and the vague, formless grandeur of Ossian came like a 
sea-breeze to expel the sultry, close air of the artificial 
literature that had pretended to exist for so long a time. 
The inspiration, you will notice, came to the Continent 
from England. Lillo, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Os- 
sian, each in his own way served as model for French 
and German writers ; Rousseau was directly inspired by 
Richardson, and it was from Rousseau and Ossian that 
Goethe drew strength for writing his " Werther," a book 
that swept over Europe like a meteor. 

We of the present day, one of whose favorite affecta- 
tions is the love of sincerity, are apt to look with a good 
deal of contempt on the worship of Ossian, and to sneer at 
our ancestors for finding any delight in his tumid pages. 
It may be questioned, however, whether our painstaking 
resuscitations of the dead, with their easily pierced veneer- 
ing of local color, are actually much better than the vague 
grandeur and sham heroics of the famous bard. At any 
rate, whether the poem was really great or really pretty, 
it is our duty in the first place to understand why it was 
liked, as it undeniably was, and to do this we must re- 
member the growing intolerance of antiquated and arti- 
ficial forms. As Mr. Stephen puts it (" English Thought," 
ii. 447), "its crude attempts to represent a social state 
when great men stalked through the world in haughty 
superiority to the narrow conventions of modern life, were 
congenial to men growing weary of an effete formalism. 
Men had been talking under their breath, and in a minc- 
ing dialect, so long that they were easily gratified, and 
easily imposed upon, by an affectation of vigorous and 
natural sentiment." Then, too, the science of criticism, 



420 Miglish Literature, 

which is really not fault-finding, but precise description, 
was in its tenderest infancy, and men had few rules for 
the guidance of their belief. 

III. The general interest in the past, together with the 
incompetence of the public to determine what was genuine, 
opened a tempting path before literary adventurers, and 
Chatterton (1752-'70), with his Rowley poems (written be- 
tween 1767 and 1770, and published 1777), prepared a 
controversy that was nearly as hot as that over the au- 
thenticity of Ossian. I have not time or space for the 
full discussion of Chatterton's poems ; they may be found 
described at some length and praised with great fervor 
by Mr. Theodore Watts in the third volume of Ward's 
*' English Poets." All that can be said in praise of Chat- 
terton is said there, as well as some things that cannot be 
accepted without hesitation. To assert that the use of 
proper names, like gems, for purposes of decoration, was 
copied by Coleridge in his " Kubla Khan " from Chatter- 
ton, who invented it, seems rash. We have found the same 
tendency in the imitators of Milton, in Thomson, and in 
Goldsmith. It is used with a different purpose by the 
various poets, because each has his own special message 
to utter, and utters it in his own way. 

Then, too, Chatterton's forgeries form scarcely " a puz- 
zling chapter of literary history." It was, so to speak, 
Chatterton's only way of being romantic ; he was inter- 
ested in the past of the Middle Ages, and imitated it, as 
hosts of poets have done since, and the most natural way 
for him was under an assumed personality ; this, too, 
was his only way of getting readers. If he had sent out 
his imitations as avowed imitations, he would have been 
laughed at — but there was some interest in old poems ; 
they were curious and interesting for the people of that 
polished age, who would have derided taking them for 



English Literature. 421 

models. The old poems were at that time simply inter- 
esting curiosities, which no one thought of copying. Ev- 
ery one was eager to exhume relics, but with no inten- 
tion of putting them to any use. Keats, it should be 
said in answer to Mr. Watts, did not so much imitate 
Chatterton as he did those who inspired the earlier 
poet.* 

At this time, as we have said, the taste of the public 
was very uncritical. Dr. Percy, when he published his 
famous "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," in 1765, 
felt impelled to work them over to suit modern ears, so 
that a new and unamended edition had to be supplied 
about fifteen years ago, shorn of Percy's attempted im- 
provem^its.f Scott, too, in his "Minstrelsy of the Scot- 

-7^ 

* It is curious to notice a similar occurrence in French literature. In 
1803, a M. de Surville, who, by the way, had fought among our French 
allies in the Revolutionary war, published a volume of poems alleged to 
have been written in the fifteenth century by an ancestress of his, Clo- 
tilde de Surville. The poems of this Gallic Rowley he professed to have 
discovered in an old chest, but the originals were said to have been de- 
stroyed in the Revolution. Criticism found itself between two apparent 
impossibilities— one that Clotilde had written the poems in the fifteenth 
century, the other that M. de Surville had written them in the eighteenth. 
For a long time, the forgery escaped detection. Even in Longfellow's 
" Poets and Poetry of Europe " (1845), p. 441, we find them mentioned and 
the best one translated, although with a strong hint of their ungenuine- 
ness. In fact, this had already been conclusively proved in France ; more 
careful study of the old language had made the deception clear, in the 
same way that Rowley had been detected. The process was more difficult 
because the execution was more careful in the French poems. Vide 
Sainte-Beuve, " Tableau de la Poesie Fran9aise an XVI« Siecle," p. 475 
et seq. 

t Ritson objected to Percy's inaccurac}^, and what was his reward ? Sir 
E. E. Brydges wrote of him {vide AlHbone, mh "Ritson"): "Mr. Joseph 
Ritson, unilluminated by a particle of taste or fancy, and remarkable only 
for the unnecessary drudgery with which he dedicated his life to one of 
the humblest departments of literary antiquities, and for the bitter inso- 



422 English Literature. 

tish Border" (1802-3), mangled some of the old ballads, 
not from a preference for bad work, but in order to please 
the public. The readers of that time wanted omissions 
supplied, roughnesses trimmed away, and everything pol- 
ished, just as now we prefer tinkered hymns. Exactness, 
like all the virtues, is a plant of slow growth. 

Percy's " Reliques " is commonly mentioned as the 
turning-point in the taste of the last century, but it was 
quite as much the result, as the cause, of the renewed 
interest in old ballads. Percy did more completely what 
had been done feebly before. Still, it is well to bear in 
mind the date of the publication, 1765, as a mnemonic 
point, for this was by far the most important of the col- 
lections. A copy of the book fell into the hands of Burger 

lence of foul abuse with which he communicated his dull acquisitions to 
the public." 

Scott {he. cit.) said : " A man of acute observation, profound research, 
and great labour, these valuable attributes were unhappily combined with 
an eager irritability of temper, which induced him to treat antiquarian 
trifles with the same seriousness which men of the world reserve for mat- 
ters of importance." 

In 1803, the same year that Scott's " Border Minstrelsy " was com- 
pleted, then appeared Oehlenschlager's collection of "Volkslieder;" these, 
too, had been improved after the usual fashion. 

Allan Ramsay had offended in the same way. He published, in 1716, 
" Christ's Kirk on the Green " (attributed to James I. of Scotland), and 
afterwards added a first, and then a second, canto of his own composition. 
In the "Tea-table Miscellany" and "Evergreen" "he abridged, he va- 
ried, modernized, and superadded." 

We need not go so far for instances. Many of the best-known hymns 
are tinkered, and the process has been going on for many years. Vide 
Sir Roundell Palmer, " The Book of Praise," Preface, and Nation, iii. 
65. The main thing desired in a hymn is religious fervour ; textual ac- 
curacy is a secondary matter. In the same way, Ramsay, Percy, and 
Scott wanted to arouse an interest in the past, for which precision was 
pedantry. 



English Literature. 423 

(1748-94), who translated many of the ballads into Ger- 
man, and was inspired by it to write his own "Lenore." * 
This ballad ran through Europe with the speed of its 
knightly hero, and it was in 1795 that a lady in Edinburgh 
showed it, in William Taylor's translation, to Scott, who 
imitated it in his " William and Helen," which he publish- 
ed along with his " Wild Huntsman," and was soon fol- 
lowed by his version of " Goetz von Berlichingen," 1799. 
It would be fair to say that Percy's " Reliques " had more 
influence in Germany than in England. Biirger and his 
fellow-poets of the Hainhund, who were all young men 
with a confused hatred of tyrants and great affection for 
the full moon, took to writing more ballads after the old 
pattern, as illustrated by Percy's "Reliques," and ex- 
plained by Herder, and soon Herder established the new 
lines in which German thought was destined to run, sub- 
stituting the intelligent study of the past for the faithful 
following of academic rules. Fully to describe Herder's 
work would take us too far from our subject. He was 
the guiding- spirit of the new movement which placed 
Germany in literature abreast of the richest countries of 
Europe, and in science ahead of any. And to describe 
him it would be necessary to point out at length the 
enormous influence which Rousseau had on thought at 
the end of the last century. He was one of the men 

* Written in 1773, and published in 1774 in the Gottingen Musenal- 
manach {vide Doring : G. A. Burger, " Ein biog. Denknial "). 

The " Lenore " had been translated by Sir J. T. Stanley, who published 
his translation in 1786. It was "a paraphrase, not to say a new poem; 
the original being ' altered and added to,' to square it with ' the cause of 
religion and morality' " {vide Gilchrist's "Blake," i. 138). 

Henry James Pye, poet-laureate in 1790, also translated the "Lenore," 
as did the Hon. William Eobert Spencer, in the same year, 1796; this 
last-mentioned translation was illustrated by Spencer's aunt, Lady Diana 
Beauclerc. 



424 English Literature. 

who did most to depose reason and to set up emotion in 
its place, a change which began in England. 

IV. The history of German literature until nearly the 
end of the last century is almost a reproduction, in minia- 
ture to be sure, of what we have seen in England. We 
have noticed certain points of likeness in the intellectual 
growth of England, France, and Italy. Gradually, as 
modern thought spread into Germany, similar results fol- 
lowed there. Thus, Martin Opitz (1597-1639), a man en- 
dowed with but little original genius, opened the way for 
a new development of German literature by announcing 
the necessity of following the methods of the classical 
writers, especially those of Rome. Yet he urged his fel- 
low-countrymen to use their own language ; and in his 
tastes, for he admired Seneca and Ovid, as well as in the 
tendency of his instructions, he belongs to those men who 
announced the rules of classicism which they barely un- 
derstood. He was intellectually the companion of Mal- 
herbe in France, and of the early formal writers, between 
Waller and Dryden, in England.* To be sure, he admired 
Ronsard and Du Bellay among French writers, and al- 
lowed his name to be used on the title-page of a trans- 
lation of Sidney's " Arcadia ;" but his own work was cool 
and restrained. 

What is called the second Silesian school, of which 
Hofmannswaldau (1618-79) and Lohenstein (1635-83) 
were the leading representatives, corresponds to the reign 
of the brief -lived precieux in France, and that of the so- 
called metaphysical poets in England. We have seen 
some of Cowley's conceits ; Germany was not left be- 
hind. Thus, Hofmannswaldau wrote : 

* Vide Hettner, " Literaturgescliichte das XVIII'" Jahrhundert," III. i. 
180, and " Koberstein," ii, 46 et seq. 



English Literature. 425 

*' Was ist doch insgemein ein Freund in dieser Welt ? 
Ein Spiegel, der vergrosst und falsehlich schoner macht, 
Ein Pfennig, der nicht Sti'ieh und nicht Gewichte halt, 
Ein Wesen, so aus Zorn und bittrer Galle lacbet, 
Ein Strauchstein, dessen Glantz, uns Sehande und Schaden bringt, 
Ein Dolch, der schimmernd ist, und uns zu Hertzen dringt, 
Ein Heilbrunn, etc. 
Ein goldgestickter Strang, etc. 
Ein Honigwurin, etc. 

Ein weisses Henneney, das Drachen hat gebohren, 
Ein falscher Crocodil, der weinend uns zerreist, 
Ein Sirenen-Weib, ein Safft, ein Giftbaum, ein Apfell von Damasc, ein 

iiberzuckert Gifft, ein Pfeiffer in das Garn, ein goldner Urtels-Tisch, 

ein Zeug," etc. 

There seems no reason for his ever stopping. 

Canitz (1654-99) headed a reaction in favor of so- 
berer methods ; he inclined towards Opitz rather than 
towards his lush successors, but he derived most of his 
inspiration from the later Frenchmen, especially from Boi- 
leau. Johann von Besser (1654-1729) belonged to the 
same more modern school. He lived long enough to be a 
friend of Gottsched, who was the most formidable foe of 
anything like indifference to the rigid rules of French 
classicism. It is curious to notice how Canitz, Besser, 
and Gottsched imitated in their play the real work that 
was going on in France and England. Biedermann * gives 
some most amusing instances of their unprofitable zeal : 

" Besser, on the death of his wife, composed ' on the 
day of her funeral ' an elegy nine pages long, which, 
however, even Gottsched declared was unnatural and 
void of poetic truth. To this he added two other poems, 
in the name of his children, one of which was inscribed 
thus : ' This was written to his dear mamma, on his sick 
bed and in his seventh year by her most obedient and 

* " Deutschland im XVIIP^" Jahrhundert," II. i. 448, note. 



426 English Literature. 

only son.' The other, 'A lament for the untimely loss 
of her dear mamma by her orphaned two-year-old daugh- 
ter.' The seven -year- old boy is represented as writing 

thus : 

*' Man sprach, sie hatte mir ein Schwesterlein geboren ; 
1st leider das Geburt, wo sie versterben muss ?' 

[They said she had brought forth a little sister for me, 
but is it birth, when she must die ? O, dearest mamma ! 
what has your son lost ! But what has papa lost by this 
sad blow ! I lie sick, so sore is my grief, and she who 
should console me is the prey of death,' etc.] More- 
over, Besser asked his friends for additional eulogies, 
and so appeared a stately 'memorial for the late Mrs. 
Besser, nee Kiihlewein.' He also composed an elegy on 
the death of the wife of Canitz. At the very beginning 
he wanted to express the thought that she had never 
grieved her husband except by dying, but he could not 
put it in such a way as would satisfy him, try as he would ; 
hence he communicated his perplexity to the disconsolate 
widower. Canitz set to work at once, in friendly rivalry, 
and wrote some lines that seemed to him very fair, but 
he suppressed them because at last Besser was able to 
write something which seemed better. 

" In Weichmann's ' Poesie der Niedersachsen,' vol. ii. 
p. 249, are printed four elegies on the death of a son of 
the poet Brockes, and the heart-broken father replies in 
verse, using the same rhymes. Mosheim, who was an ab- 
bot, on the death of his wife wrote to Gottsched that, hav- 
ing lost so worthy and amiable a spouse, he felt it to be his 
duty to give the world a testimonial of his deep grief ; but, 
as he was no poet, would not Gottsched write an elegy in 
his name ; and to make it easier he sent him a description 
of the departed lady. Gottsched at once composed an 
elegy, for which Mosheim sent a modest honorarium. 



English Literature. 427 

The widower expressed his satisfaction with the poem, 
but, he said, ' I shall have to add a few lines, for, as a 
teacher of spiritual truth, I must really say something 
about patience and trust in God.' " 

For instances of incredible provincialism the reader 
must consult the various German authorities referred to 
by Biedermann. If, however, the faults of pseudo-classi- 
cism were magnified in Germany, the awakening, when it 
came, was such as not even the most hopeful could have 
dared to expect. It is to be remembered, too, that the in- 
spiration reached Germany from the outside. Such medi- 
ocrity, and' worse than mediocrity, as we have seen, was 
powerless even to beget a healthy reaction. It was mainly 
from England that the great change came, and with one 
bound Germany sprang into line with the oldest civiliza- 
tions of Europe. It is no wonder that Germans are fond of 
studying the history of their own literature. Few coun- 
tries have had so dramatic an experience. Although the 
ballads were an important indication of the new literary 
fervor in Germany, they were not the only one. In 1774 
Goethe's "Werther" had appeared, and it was not long 
before the novel became known in England. Scott says 
in the preface to his translation of " Goetz von Ber- 
lichingen," that " it is by the elegant author of the Sor- 
rows of Werther," of which a translation had appeared in 
1779, followed by another in 1786.* The prejudice against 
the alleged immorality and atheism of the Germans was 
very great ; the language was not commonly known — it 
held very much the same position that the Russian does 

* There were three French translations before the Revolution — the first, 
from which the first English one was taken, in 1773. After the Kevolution 
the book became better known, and nine new translations appeared be- 
.tween 1792 and 1809 {vide J. W. Appell, "Werther und seine Zeit," 
and " Goethe- Juhrbuch," iii. 27). 



428 English Literature, 

now ; it had not become an essential part of every edu- 
cated person's education. The sentimentality of the Ger- 
mans was much derided by the Tories. They were looked 
upon as destructive and dangerous radicals, philosophical 
socialists, and free-lovers. Coleridge, for instance, was 
much attacked for his praise of this people, and even 
Lamb was lugged in for reproof, although it was simply 
as a friend of Coleridge that he was held up to general 
execration. He himself knew very little about German 
literature, and was frequently ridiculing Coleridge's admi- 
ration of it. He speaks of " Faust," in a letter to him, as 
follows, Aug. 26, 1814 : "I have been reading Madame 
Stael on Germany ; an impudent, clever woman. But if 
^ Faust ' be no better than her abstract of it, I counsel thee 
to let it alone. How canst thou translate the language of 
cat-monkeys ?* Fie on such fantasies !" ("Works," i. 160). 
And, earlier, Aug. 6, 1800, he tells Coleridge that he has 
sent him, " with one or two small German books," " that 
drama in which got-fader performs" (i. 115). Again (ii. 
114), in a letter to Patmore asking about his dog Dash, he 
says : " What I scratch out is a German quotation from 
Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals ; but I remember 

you don't read German. But Mrs. P niay, so I wish 

I had let it stay. The meaning in English is — 'Avoid 
to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would 
avoid fire or a precipice,' which I think is a sensible ob- 
servation. The Germans are certainly profounder than 
we." This is certainly not the language of an adorer of 

* Lamb refers to her " De I'Allemagne," pt. ii. oh. xxiii. : " On eroit 
decouvrer, en ecoutant le langage comique de ces chats-singes, quelles 
seroient les idees des animaux s'ils pouvoient les expvimer, quelle image 
grossiere et ridicule ils se feroient de la nature et de I'homme." 

The scene in the " Hexenkiiche " is meant, in which appear Kater and 
Katzin. 



English Literature. 429 

German literature.* Another important influence at work 
to restrain the English from excessive enthusiasm for 
foreign literature was the general horror of the French 
principles, which greatly strengthened the English con- 
servatism at the time of the French Revolution and later. 
Moreover, the very movement towards the study of their 
old literature confirmed the patriotism of most of the na- 
tions of Europe, and encouraged them against the en- 
forced cosmopolitanism which Napoleon's armies were 
carrying everywhere. What was thought of the German 
radicalism, and of the plays and stories of that people in 
the last ten years of the eighteenth century, may be seen 
in many quarters ; among others, in the very amusing 
Anti-Jacobin JReview,f to which Canning and John Hook- 

* Henry Crabbe Kobinson ("Diary," ii. 109) : "Charles Lainb, though 
he always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that 
his name was known to him." Goethe thought that Lamb had writ- 
ten a sonnet on his own name. Lamb even wrote a " ballad from the Ger- 
man "(" Works," iv. 32) : 

" The clouds are blackening, the storm is threatening." 

f Flace aicx dames. The excellent Hannah More wrote (as quoted 
in Carlyle's "Essays," ii. 416): "Those ladies who take the lead in 
society are loudly called upon to act as guardians of the public taste as 
well as of the public virtue. They are called upon, therefore, to oppose 
with the whole weight of their influence, the irruption of those swarms of 
Publications now daily issuing from the banks of the Danube, Avhich, like 
their ravaging predecessors of the dai'ker ages, though with far other and 
more fatal arms, are overrunning civilized society. Those readers whose 
purer taste has been formed on the correct models of the old classic school, 
see with indignation and astonishment the Huns and Vandals once more 
overpowering the Greeks and Romans, They behold our minds, Avith a 
retrograde but rapid motion, hurried back to the reign of Chaos and old 
Night, by distorted and unprincipled compositions, which, in spite of strong 
flashes of genius, unite the taste of the Goths with the morals of Bagshot." 
" The newspapers announce that Schiller's tragedy of the ' Robbers,' which 



430 English Literature. 

ham Frere were prominent contributors. Coleridge and 
Southey are there spoken of in a way that makes one 
doubt whether poets are really as sensitive as they are 
sometimes said to be. The play called "The Rivals, or 
the Double Arrangement " (1798), is a most unjust although 
amusing parody of the German plays of the time, Goethe, 
Schiller, and Kotzebue being impartially derided. It was 
really not until time had shown the needlessness of the 
panic about Germany that the literature of that country 
again received anything like the attention it deserved. It 
was Carlyle who, more than any other one man, in his re- 
view articles now published in his Essays, directed the 
attention of the English people to what they had long 
neglected. These reviews appeared about 1830, contem- 
poraneous with the similar work of Stapfer and Ampere 
in France, and since then German has been studied with 
ever-increasing vigor. 

V. I have said that the excitement over the French 
Revolution had the effect of strengthening the national 
consciousness of the different countries of Europe, and the 
new literature aided this. Instead of a cosmopolitan lit- 
erature which should spread over Europe like the fashion 
of wearing wigs, the discovery of the old ballads, of the 
early ante- classical plays and poems, brought before the 

inflamed the young nobility of Germany to enlist themselves into a band of 
highwaymen to rob in the forests of Bohemia, is now acting in England by 
persons of quality." — " Strictures on the Modern System of Female Edu- 
cation," lYQO. 

The Anti-Jacobin was equally timorous, though with less excuse. Han- 
nah More detested the Anti-Jacobin ; vide letter in " Life," p. 169, in which 
she says, Sept. 11, 1800, "It is spreading more mischief over the land than 
almost any other book, because it is doing it under the mask of loyalty." 

These views may be compared wdth the less timorous but equally in- 
exact remarks of La Harpe in his notice of " Werther." 



English Literature. 431 

public very strongly the notion of national models and 
forgotten enthusiasms.* 

The first effect, as well as the most lasting one, of the 
return to the past was a most inspiring one. Its most 
noteworthy representative was Burns. What a change 
we have here ! And yet it is to be remembered that for 
a long time there had been fermenting the principles — so 
far as principles ferment — that influenced him. Through- 
out the eighteenth century there had been numberless 
song-writers in Scotland ; as Mr. Minto says, in his notice 
of the Scotch minor song- writers (Ward," English Poets," 
iii. 486), "Peers, members of the Suprenie Court of Law, 
diplomatists, lairds, clergymen, schoolmasters, men of sci- 
ence, farmers, gardeners, compositors, pedlers — all were 
trying their hands at patching old songs and making new 
songs." Allan Ramsay had made his collections, but Mr. 
Minto is right in saying that very little of real worth was 
produced by the writers of that school. The sources were 
poisoned by continual awe of the better-known literature 
of England, then in a most flourishing condition ; but, as 
this grew pompous and empty, the truer inspiration proved 
more powerful, and a large number of excellent Scotch 
songs were written in the last century, before the time of 
Burns. He was the final product of a long-continued ten- 
dency in one direction, and not a miraculous phenomenon. 
He had his roots deep in the past. There had been many 
versifiers mastering different measures, which reached 
Burns in a state of completeness ; these men made a small 
but eager public familiar with countless references and 

* One instance of the growth of national feeling at this time is the re- 
vival, in an artificial form, of the Highland dress, A somewhat similar 
perversion of patriotism that we see in Germany is the fervent respect 
which some writers show for the mediaeval text. The Roman letters are 
regarded by them as effeminate foreign luxuries. 



432 English Literature. 

illusions ; they introduced a number of subjects, which 
he, with his genius, was able to treat with greater 
beauty, giving them the final touch that makes poetry 
immortal. 

We have Burns's own testimony that he busily studied 
the old ballads * and songs of Scotland, which had never 
died out of the familiar knowledge of the people. If he 
had not told us this, it might have been readily con- 
jectured by observation of the metres of his poems, when 
he spoke, or, rather, sang words that tended to sweep 
away all the chill, didactic moralizing that had so long 
made up the body of English verse. 

" Through busiest street and loneliest glen 
Are felt the flashes of his pen ; 
He rules 'mid winter snows, and when 

Bees fill their hives ; 
Deep in the general heart of men 

His power survives." 

Thus Wordsworth wrote in one of Burns's favorite meas- 
ures, one, it may be said, that he found in common use 
among Scotch song-writers. f At another time Words- 

* " In my infant and boyish days I owed much to an old woman who 
resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and super- 
stition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales 
and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks," 
etc. " The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was 
the 'Vision of Mirza,' Addison's hymn, 'How are'thy servants blest, 
Lord,' in Mason's ' Select Collection of English Songs.' " This may have 
been the book he refers to as "my vade mecumy "I pored over them 
driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,verse by vei'se ; careful- 
ly noting the true, tender, or sublime from affectation and fustian " (letter 
to Dr. Moore, Aug. 2,1 YSY). 

f Vide Watson's Collection, pt. i. p. 32, " The Life and Death of the 
Piper of Kilbarchan ;" and " William Lithgow, Writer in Edinburgh, His 
Epitaph," pt. ii. p. 67 : 



English Literature. 433 

worth, who was by no means lavish with praise of other 
poets, wrote of Burns : 

" Whose light I hailed when first it shone, 
And showed my youth, 
How verse may build a princely throne 
On humble truth." 

The formal literature of Scotland before Burns was 
peculiarly stilted ; but the poet turned his back on that 
exaggerated artificiality, and went back to the people, 
whose influence began to be felt in literature and in pol- 
itics as never before. Now was the time that we find 
fully stated one of the truths which it had been long 
learning from many teachers — namely, that man qua man 
is an object of interest and sympathy. In other words, 
what is a platitude in literature and conversation, and 
still a surprise to us when we became aware of it in life — 
the notion, that is, that all men are brothers — was by him 
plainly asserted ; asserted, we must remember, not discov- 
ered ; the century had done that. The great democratic 
truth to which we all bow with great civility, but seldom 
take home with us, so that possibly it may some day 
enter the house without invitation, was reached with 
great difiiculty. We have seen its slow attainment in 
the history of fading literary tenets and of revolutionary 
conceptions of literary propriety, just as, possibly, the im- 
pending struggle in Europe between authority and free- 
dom is foreshadowed in certain forms of more recent 
literature, as in realism, for instance. 

"His wife was also (as all are) Bad. 
She sold away all that he had, 
Which broke his heart and made it sad 

And cold as lead ; 
Yet he was ay an honest Lad 
But now he's Dead." 
19 



434 English Literature. 

This notion of what is called the brotherhood of man — a 
phrase that is offensive to our ears from its being so much 
mouthed by demagogues — is not necessarily at variance 
with what we noticed of the growth of national feeling ; 
for that is but one step towards the comprehension of the 
higher truth. What formed the common basis of both 
. movements, or, rather, made them practically one thing, 
was, first, the perception of an identity of interests, and 
so of emotions, and then, as a matter of course, sympathy 
quickly followed. It would be unwise to give all the 
credit of this to literature, for literature, while it teaches, 
is but the expression of opinions already formed. Doubt- 
less, widening commerce did much towards opening the 
way for a change, but literature aided the great move- 
ment. The infinitely reasonable being who, for instance, 
fired his imagination with Akenside's description of its 
pleasures, was far removed from wide interests or from 
general sympathy with mankind. That was growing up 
in out-of-the-way corners, not in the great highway which 
was adorned with the stuccoed monuments that are now 
crumbling. In those the Reason was worshipped ; the 
adoration of the emotions had a touch of heresy about 
it. Reason was the state church ; only dissenters wor- 
shipped the emotions.* 

We have already seen numerous instances of this ex- 
tension of sympathy, and other evidence is readily to be 
had, and notably in Thomson. Thus, in his "Summer" 
(1. 961 et seq.) : 

* It would be extremely interesting, if space permitted, to point out how 
Methodism, which arose simultaneously with the great romantic move- 
ment — i. e., the revival of emotional feeling — was the religious expression 
of the same general movement. Ritualism would then be another devel- 
opment of romanticism. 



English Literature. 435 

" Breathed hot 
From all the boundless furnace of the sky 
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand, 
A suffocating Wind the pilgrim smites 
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, 
Son of the desert, e'en the camel feels, 
Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast. 
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad. 
Sallies the sudden Whirlwind. Straight the sands, 
Commoved around, in gathering eddies play ; 
Nearer and nearer still they darkening come ; 
Till, with the general all-involving storm 
Swept up, the whole continuous Wilds arise ; 
And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown, 
Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, 
Beneath descending hills, the Caravan 
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets 
The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain. 
And Mecca saddens at the long delay." 

This passage sliows us how commerce was widening 
the interests of the English ; and the interest in the poor 
is indicated by these lines ("Winter," 1. 322 et seq.) : 

" Ah ! little think the gay licentious Proud, 
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround ; 
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, 
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste ; 
Ah ! little think they, while they dance along, 
How many feel, this very moment, Death, 
And all the sad variety of pain. 

% It * * * 

*' How many bleed. 
By shameful variance betwixt man and man. 
How many pine in Want, and dungeon-glooms ; 
Shut from the common air and common use 
Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup 
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread 
Of Misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds, 



43^ English Literature. 

How many shrink- into the sordid hut 
Of cheerless poverty. 

* * , * * * 

And how can I forget the generous band, 
Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched 
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail — 
TJnpitied and unheard, when Misery moans ; 
When Sickness pines; when Thirst and Hunger burns. 
And poor Misfortune feels the lash of Vice ?" 

In the same book he describes the shepherd dying in the 
snow ; the descent of the wolves, 

" By wintry famine roused, from all the tract 
Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps, 
And wavy Apennines and Pyrenees, 
Branch out stupendous into distant lands ;" 

the Grisons, overwhelmed with avalanches (1. 414, etc.); 
and (1. 800, etc.) the Russian exile. Although the descrip- 
tions are too often academic and marked by the false 
Arcadianism of the time, they were all new appearances 
in English literature, and what Thomson stated with a 
good deal of rhetorical flourish was also uttered in their 
own way by other poets. Shenstone's "Schoolmistress," 
which Shenstone tried to save from criticism by pretend- 
ing that he meant the poem for a caricature, Goldsmith's 
" Deserted Village," and Gray's " Elegy " deal with the 
condition of the poor. And the ballads which began to 
be written at about the same time naturally took hold 
of new and simpler subjects, which were simply treated. 

It" may be justly urged that some of these poets were 
more concerned for the picturesqueness of what they de- 
scribed than animated by any great zeal for the welfare of 
their kind, but that does not affect their claims to be the 
first discoverers of this new and fertile region; and, more- 
over, it is only a proof that they were better writers than 



English Literature. 437 

philantliropists ; and the world requires, before all things, 
of poets that they should be able to put well whatever 
they may have to say. Nothing is ever put as well as 
it can be until it is expressed by some one who is mas- 
tered by an overwhelming need to utter that above all 
things in the world. Such a person is more likely to 
take the current forms of his day, and say his say in them. 
New models are often chosen by men whose first desire 
is for novelty. 

If Thomson was cold, and possibly indifferent, the ac- 
cusation cannot be brought against Cowper, the English 
fellow-worker with Burns. He, to be sure, did not spring 
from the soil like the Scotch singer ; he was rather the 
product of a combination of literary culture and delicate 
susceptibility to nature and simplicity. One main differ- 
ence between him and his contemporaries, to which Hett- 
ner calls attention, is this — that, while they copied other 
poets, he copied nature. They drew their inspiration 
from Milton, or Spenser, or Pope ; he drew his from 
the simple life he led and the things he saw about him. 
He was the first of the modern English poets to describe 
nature directly, as he saw it, instead of doing it by cull- 
ing adjectives and phrases from others' books. 

I will not quote corroboratory passages ; waning space 
forbids this ; but I will refer the reader to the descrip- 
tions in the " Winter Morning Walk," the " Garden," the 
"Winter Evening," and the "Timepiece," for examples. 
Cowper's poetry will not win hosts of admirers ; no so- 
cieties will be formed for the purpose of reading papers 
on his verses and expounding his meaning ; but the reader 
who may be interested in other things than the pomp 
and clatter of contemporary poetry will be rewarded by 
occasional tender, simple passages. He will detect many 
attractive qualities in the poems, but he is tolerably sure 



438 English Literature. 

not to be swept off his feet by enthusiasm. This is gen- 
erally the fate of a reformer, of the first man who writes 
imder a new impulse. He is like the guide-post where 
roads divide ; he points the way which others are able to 
make more attractive, and is soon forgotten. We overlook 
Cowper's simple record of nature while we are under the 
influence of Wordsworth's mightier verse, and w^e grow 
impatient of his philosophy when we see how much fur- 
ther later poets carried the notion of the brotherhood of 
man which he was one of the first authoritatively to 
utter. 

Cowper's poems appeared in 1'782 and 1783. Ten years 
later Wordsworth gave the world his " Evening Walk " 
and " Descriptive Sketches," in which we find much more 
distinctly the traces of the eighteenth century than any 
indications of what was to make the nineteenth memor- 
able. Wordsworth had not yet caught up with his own 
time. He was still in leading-strings,* and these poems 
abound with reminiscences of Goldsmith's sonorous lines. 
Even such men as Michael Bruce (1746-67) and John 
Logan (1748-88), though evidently the product of their 
own day, had their faces more directly turned towards 
the day that was dawning. Wordsworth was doubtless 
rendered harsh in his judgment of the eighteenth century 
by the recollection of some of the unprofitable enthusi- 
asms of his youth, which inspired such lines ks these, 
which echo Goldsmith and Thomson : 

" To hear the roar 
That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore ;" 

and these : 

" Fair scenes, erewhile, I taught, a happy child, 
The echo of your rocks my carol wild ; 

* Vide Mr. J. R. Lowell's article on Wordsworth in "Among my Books," 
2d series. 



English Literature. 439 

Then did no ebb of cheerfulness demand 

Sad tides of joy from melancholy's hand. 

In youth's wild eye the livelong day Avas bright, 

The sun at morning, and the stars at night, 

Alike when first the vales the bittern fills, 

Or the first woodcocks roamed the hills. 

In thoughtless gaiety I coursed the plain, 

And hope itself was all I knew of pain ; 

For then, e'en then the little heart would beat 

At times while young Content forsook her seat, 

And wild Impatience, pointing upward, showed, 

Where, tipped with gold, the mountain summits glowed." 

In such lines as these we are back in the calm of the 
eighteenth century : 

" Even here Content has fixed her smiling reign 
With Independence, child of high Disdain." 

" Plunge with the Russ embrown'd by Terror's breath." 

" Bare steeps, where Desolation stalks, afraid." 

Yet before the century had reached its end by the al- 
manac, he was speaking with his own voice, for the " Lyri- 
cal Ballads" were published in 1798, The discussion of 
that book, however, falls outside of our present limits. 
In them there spoke the spirit of a new age, which the 
greater part of the previous hundred years had been pre- 
paring ; for the centuries, like the magazines, always ap- 
pear in advance of their date. 

VI. It is sometimes urged against this way of regard- 
ing literature, that it tends to lower our admiration of 
genius by showing that this lacks what we may call its 
daemonic quality, and is itself subject to the control of 
law. It is demanded of us that we regard genius as some- 
thing absolutely inexplicable, as a miraculous quality that 
occasionally flashes over the amazed world as a comet 
does over the midnight sky, more brilliant than the mo- 



440 English Literature. 

notonous stars and apparently following its own free will. 
Yet, while ttie genesis of comets is obscure, their paths 
are all marked out beforehand ; and from them they can- 
not swerve save in obedience to law. Genius is no less 
wonderful for being modified by circumstances ; only 
when these are favorable does it attain its highest de- 
velopment. A man must have hearers before he will say 
his best. When we are talking to ourselves we speak be- 
low our breath ; only when we are addressing some one 
else do we use our full voice. The man who is sure of 
an audience derives from that feeling the delight that a 
speaker knows when he stands before an eager multitude. 
Without that he is dumb. Doubtless the orations that 
Demosthenes uttered on the sea-shore were inferior to 
those with which he fired the Athenians against Philip. 
The man who bows to his time may waste his strength in 
uncongenial and inferior work, as did Addison when he 
ceased to be natural and wrote his '' Cato." The writer 
who defies his time is fortunate if he is merely eccentric : 
it cannot be simply a coincidence that Collins and Blake, 
the most rarely poetical minds of the last century, w^ere 
mad. Gray gave up tryiAg to reach deaf ears, and con- 
soled himself with study. 

Yet the opposition to regarding the laws by which genius 
is limited lies deep. We cannot bear to think that the in- 
tellect is subject to law, like the dull stone. We cannot 
endure the thought that while our bodies are limited in 
power, as in size, our minds are not superior to restraints 
and shackles ; yet all history goes to show the . existence 
of the control of the mind by heredity and circumstances, 
whether these inspire assent or contradiction. In time, 
doubtless, the extent of these influences will be settled 
with greater definiteness than is now possible when even 
their existence is widely doubted. 



English Literature. 441 

Genius is no less dsemonic than it ever was. Science does 
not destroy the inexplicable— it merely pushes it back a 
little ; it widens the horizon, but it cannot widen it in- 
finitely. We discover some of the things that control 
genius, but not its whole secret. We see that great writers 
are distinguished from madmen by the coherence of what 
they say with what has been said before. This they may 
contradict, but yet their words are inspired by it. Briefly, 
literature is a vast conversation ; it strays over a large 
number of subjects, discussing, affirming or denying, point- 
ing out an unsuspected application or an unanswerable ar- 
gument, always affected by what has gone before, just as 
in talk a witticism, a profound or pathetic remark springs 
from something already said or done. This fact, that there 
is no parthenogenesis in intellectual life, should not be 
looked upon as degrading the man who utters the witty, 
profound, or pathetic remark, for it certainly does not. 

In the fine arts we see the same laws. We discover the 
beginning of painting, we trace its early growth in Italy, 
and its swift rise. We see the influence of a master on 
his pupil, as of Perugino on Raphael. We notice its de- 
cay, as in the artificial painting of the last century, the 
sentimental painting coinciding with the sentimental novel 
and play, and pre-Raphaelitism in this century contempo- 
raneous with the neo- romantic movement and realism 
nowadays in pictures and novels. Yet we do not feel that 
we are unjust to painters when we point out their depend- 
ence on their predecessors and contemporaries, either by 
way of agreement or divergence ; to some, however, this 
way of looking at writers savors of irreverence. 

One main reason of this is doubtless the feeling — de- 
rived, with some justification, from the time when liter- 
ature was the artificial creation of scholars — that liter- 
ature is something apart from human life. The diver- 

19* 



442 English Literature. 

gence, if it exists, is fatal to literature, wliicli is nothing 
but the utterance of the human race on the subjects that 
attract its attention. Every generation comes face to face 
with the old problems of life, with grief, joy, death, as 
well as with the new ones that every century brings ; and 
it says its say, it puts on record what impresses it, what 
fills its thoughts, what it hopes, and what it fears, and 
whether it prefers to stand up against fate or to yield 
without a struggle, whether to do its duty or to hide its 
face in the sand. This utterance is what is called litera- 
ture, just as art is an expression of the same emotions by 
other means. 

Looked at in this way, the study of literature becomes 
something more than a means of gratifying aesthetic tastes ; 
it throws light on history, which records men's actions ; 
indeed, it becomes a part of history. 



INDEX. 



"Absalom and Achitophel," 51-55. 

Addison, his friendship with Steele 
discussed, 130, and n. ; his amia- 
ble character, 130 n. ; his "Ac- 
count of the Greatest English 
Poets," 131-133, and n. ; his " Bat- 
tle of Blenheim," 137; his travels 
in Italy, 140 ; his opinion of Gothic 
architecture, 141-143, and n. ; his 
cool regard for mountain scenery, 
144, 145, 150 ; his public, 158 ; his 
Spectator, 160-182] his influence 
on English novel, 174-178 ; his 
" Cato," 202 ; his kindness to 
Heni-y Carey, 231 n. ; his position 
vi'ith regard to quarrel between 
Pope and A. Philips, 232-234 ; his 
commendation of the " Essay on 
Criticism," 234, 235, 408. 

Aleman, Mateo, " Life of Guzman de 
Alfarache," 301. 

Allegories in literature, 284 n. 

" Araadis de Gaule," 87, 285, 286. 

Anne, Queen, the time of ; its char- 
acteristics, 2. 

Anti-Jacobin Review, on German lit- 
erature, 429 ; Hannah More's opin- 
ion of, 429 n. 

Aristotle, influence of, 163-167 ; on 
the drama, 189-191. 

Armstrong, John, his "Art of Health," 
382. 

"Ars Poetica," Hoi^ace's, 239; simi- 
lar manuals, 234-245. 

Athenian Mercury, the, 153. 

Athenian Society, the, 154. 

Aubignac, I'abbe d' (Hedelin), on 
the unities, 195 n. 



Ballads, Addison's admiration of, 
168-170 ; V. Knox on, 402, 403. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, " Maid's 
Tragedy," revised by Waller, 93- 
95 ; song from, 118. 

Bedford, Arthur, his attack on the 
stage, 128 n. 

Berkeley, George, Bishop, his feeling 
about mountain scener}', 147 n. 

Besser, Johaun von, his poems, 425, 
426. 

Blair, Robert, his " Grave," 378, 
379. 

Blank Verse, Miltonic, in the Eigh- 
teenth Century, 139 ; Dr. Johnson 
on, 404. 

Boccaccio, Giovanni, his imitation of 
the Latin prose style, 17. 

Bodmer, Johann Jacob, 171 ; con- 
troversy with Gottsched, 171-173 ; 
his tenets, 172 ; his influence, 335. 

Boileau, Nicolas, his "Art Poetique," 
239, 242, 243 ; predecessors, 242 n. 

Books, number printed at time of 
Restoration, 38. 

Booksellers, condition of at Restora- 
tion, 41. 

Boswell, James, his " Life of Dr, 
Johnson," 414, 415. 

Boyse, Samuel, his rakish life, 216 ; 
his moral poems, 380, 381. 

Brandes, George, on French devotion 
to unities, 198. 

Brosses, President de, his opinion of 
Gothic architecture, 143, 144 ; of 
natural scenery, 147 n. 

Browning, Robert, his treatment of 
unity of time, 201 n. 



444 



Index. 



Burger, G. A., inspired by Percy's 
" Reliques," 423 ; his " Lenore " 
translated, 423 and n. 

Bunvan, John, the growth of the 
fame of, 35 n., 57 n., 284 n. 

Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, his opinion 
of Gothic ai^chitectuve, 140. 

Burns, Robert, his predecessors, 431 ; 
his poems, 430-434. 

Burton, Robert, examples of his style, 
from the "Anatomy of Melan- 
choly," 6. 

Butler,"^ Samuel, his Hudibras, 41-43. 

Canitz, F. R. L. von, 425, 426. 
Carey, Henry, nicknames Ambrose 
Philips Namby-Pamhy, 229, and n., 

230 n. ; his "' Sally in Our Alley," 

231 n. ; his " Chrononhotonthol- 
ogos," 325-327. 

" Cato," Addison's, 202, 203 ; Gott- 
sched's imitation of, 203. 

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, his 
connection with the picaresque 
stories, 303. 

Chapman, George, his translation of 
Homer, 68. 

Chatterton,Thos.,hispoems,420,421. 

Chaucer, versions of, 72, 73 ; editions 
of, 371 n. 

" Chevy Chase," Addison's praise of^ 
168-170. 

Classics, translations of, 39, 66, 67 ; 
admiration of, 67 n. ; authointy of, 
125, 126. 

Cleveland, John, his ridicule of Puri- 
tans, 50. 

Clough, A. H., his testimony to the 
prejudice against Milton at Ox- 
ford, 36 n. 

Coleridge, S. T., his interest in Ger- 
man literature, 428. 

Collections of early poems, 388 n. 

Collier, Jeremy, his attack on the 
stage,123-129 ; his critical method 
contrasted with Addison's, 157. 

Comedies of the Restoration, 99. 

Congreve, William, 117 n., 120. 

Contemporaneousness in literature 
not determined bv dat^s, 251. 

" Contes," the, and " Eablia-ux " of 
the Middle Ages, 283. ^ 



Corneille, Pierre, on the unities, 190- 
192; his " Cid," 192. 

Coryat, Thomas, his admiration of 
Gothic cathedrals, 142 n. 

Couplet, the heroic, history of, 28- 
34 ; the awkwardness of, in the 
hands of writers before Waller, 
28, 29 n. ; Waller, the first poet to 
treat it as a unit, 26, 29 ; replaced 
the stanza, 30 ; the gradual disuse 
of enjambments in, 29, 30 n. ; 
analogous changes in the Frencli 
heroic verse, 30 n. ; Deuham's use 
of, 31. 

Cowley, Abraham, preserved the tra- 
ditions of the school of Donne, 24- 
26 ; his classical conceits, 27. 

Cowper, William, his translation of 
Homer, 70 ; his testimony to the 
prejudice against Bunyan, 35 n. ; 
his poems, 437, 438. 

Cumberland, Richard, his detestation 
of Greek tragedies and Spenser, 
386 n. 

Davenant, Sir William, his use of the 
stanza in " Gondibert," 31, 32 ; 
quotation from his preface to 
" Gondibert," 32 ; his fierce lan- 
guage in " Albovine," 36. 

Dedications in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, 211-213 ; Pope's mention of, 
212 ; practice concerning, 212. 

Defoe, Daniel, his Weekly Review^ 
156 ; importance of his secondary 
novels, 310-316 ; "Robinson Cru- 
soe," 310-312,315;" Colonel Jack," 
312-314. 

Deists, the English, 273. 

Deloney, Thomas, his novels, 305 n. 

Denham, Sir John, his use of the 
couplet, 31. 

Dennis, John, quotation from his de- 
fence of the stage, 127. 

Diction, poetic, 65. 

Didactic poetry, 381-384. 

Diderot, Denis, his admiration of 
" George Barnwell " and Moore's 
" Gamester ;" his own theories 
concerning playwriting, 333, 334, 
and n. ; his fellow-workers in de- 
nouncing classic French stage, 



Index. 



445 



384 n. ; his eulogy of Richardson, 
339. 

" Don Quixote," 28U-288. 

Donne, John, his satires, 49 ; his af- 
fectations one of the effects of the 
Renaissance, 22-24. 

Dryden, John, 43 ; his satire, 51-59 ; 
'' Mac Fleclmoe," 58, 62, 63 ; " Es- 
say on Satire," 59 ; " The Hind 
and the Panther," 60, 61 ; his 
fickleness, 61, 62 ; translations, 71, 
72 ; versions of Chaucer, 72, 73 ; 
Odes, 74, 75 ; extravagance of lan- 
guage, 76, 77 ; plays, 91-108 ; his 
dramatization of the " Paradise 
Lost," 101, 102, 104; songs, 122 ; 
his treatment of his enemies com- 
pared with Pope's, 262-264. 

"Dunciad," the, 259-264 ; its causes, 
260-268 ; result of Pope's wrath, 
264. 

Dunton, John, his praise of the 
" Pilgrim's Progress," 35 n. ; his 
Athenian Mercury^ 153 ; his de- 
scription of Cambridge, Mass., 
156 n. 

Dyer, John, his "Fleece," 382. 

Elizabethan period, the inspiration 
of the, 2 ; holds in solution merits 
and faults of later time, 247 n. ; 
renewed interest in, 401, 402. 

"English Rogue," the, 306-310. 

Episodes in novels, 302, 351. 

" Essay on Man," the, 273-275. 

Etherege, Sir George, 107, and n. ; 
song, 120. 

Euphuism, its Spanish origin, 19, 23 ; 
in Swinburne's writings, 20 n. 

Evelyn, John, his opinion of Gothic 
architecture, 142 n. ; his descrip- 
tions of mountain scenery, 146-148. 

" Fabliaux," the, and " Contes," 283. 

Fielding, Henry, his mention of starv- 
ing authors, 217, 218 ; his "Life 
and Death of Tom Thumb, the 
Great," 323-325 ; his manner com- 
pared with Richardson, 346 ; his 
"Joseph Andrews," 346-351 ; his 
novels related to picaresque novels, 
351. 



Flying Post, the, 152. 

Fraunce, A., his translation of Tasso's 
" Lamentations of Amyntas," 21. 

French imitations of Spectator, 180. 

French influence, the so-called, in 
literature, explained, 10, 78-80; 
not a complete explanation of the 
tendency towards correctness in 
the literature of Queen Anne's 
time, 10 ; literature, the aristocratic 
nature of, 13 ; the influence of the 
Latin writers on, 14, 16 ; French, 
the, their preference of Vergil or 
Tasso to Homer, 15, and n., 16 ; 
their revived interest in their early 
writers, 388 n. 

Furetiere, Antoine, his " Roman Bour- 
geois," 305. 

Gascoigne, George, his " Steele Glas," 
44-46. 

Gay, John, his " Pastorals," 233 n. 

Genius, how obedient to law, 439- 
442. 

German imitations of Spectator, 180 
n. ; interest in English literature, 
419 ; literature, its influence in 
England, 428-430 ; various opin- 
ions concerning, 428, 429, and n. 

Germany, literary movements in, cor- 
responding with those in France 
and England, 424-427 ; revival of 
literature in, 427. 

" Gil Bias," 302, 303, 306. 

Goethe, Johann W. von, interest in 
"Vicar of Wakefield," 399; in 
" Ossian," 417 n., 418 ; his " Wer- 
ther," 427. 

Golden Age, 85, 86. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, his criticism of 
" Tristram Shandy," 353 ; his writ- 
ings, 396-400; his "Traveller," 
396 ; the " Deserted Village," 397 ; 
his romanticism, 397 ; his aversion 
to the new spirit, 398 ; the " Vicar 
of Wakefield," 399, 400. 

Gothic architecture regarded as bar- 
barous in the time of Queen Anne, 
140-144 ; though admired a cen- 
tury earlier, 142 n. ; revived in- 
terest in, 363 ; architecture be- 
comes fashionable, 365, and n. 



446 



Index. 



Gottsched, Johann Christoph, his po- 
sition in Germany, IVl ; contro- 
versy with the Swiss school, 171- 
173 ; his imitation of Addison's 
" Cato," 203, 335 ; his poems, 426. 

Gray, Thomas, his " Elegy in a Coun- 
try Churchyard," 390 ; his interest 
in mountain scenery, 391-393; 
takes up Norse themes, 395. 

Greek writers, the, of secondary im- 
portance in the revival of letters, 
11, 12, 163. 

Greene, Robert, his " Dorastus and 
Fawnia," 306. 

Grimmelshausen, Hans J. C. von, 
his " Simphcissiraus," 304 ; its 
resemblance to " Colonel Jack," 
314 n. 

Hall, Joseph, his satires, 37 n., 46- 
49. 

Hardy, Alexandre, his plays, 187. 

Head, Richard, and Francis Kirkman, 
"The English Rogue," 306-310. 

Herder, J. G. von, leader of German 
thought, 423. 

Heroic plavs, 83-91. 

" Hind and the Panther," the, 60, 61. 

Hobbes, Thomas, an example of his 
style from the " Leviathan," 4 ; his 
praise of Davenant's " Gondibert," 
33. 

Hofmannswaldau, Hofmann von, his 
poetry, 424, 425. 

Hogarth, William, 380. 

Homer, Pope's translation of, 68-70, 
252, 257, 258 ; Chapman's trans- 
lation, 68-70. 

Horace, importance of, in Renais- 
sance, 239 ; translations of, 39, 67. 

Howell, James, his " Letters," their 
graceful style, 9 ; his knowledge 
of languages, 9 ; his opinion of 
mountains, 147 n. 

" Hudibras," 41-43, 50. 

Hugo, Victor, his destruction of the 
unities, 199, 200. 

Humanity, new interest in, 434. 

Hymns tinkered, 422 n. 

Jest-books, the, 305 n. 

Johnson, Samuel, his comments on 



the metaphysical poets, 22 ; on 
Donne, 22, 23 ; his praise of the 
" Pilgrim's Progress," 35 n. ; his 
" Life of Addison " quoted, 163 n., 
170 n. ; his account of impover- 
ished men of letters, 216 ; his own 
sufferings, 217; on Pope's poetry, 
280 n. ; on Richardson, 339 ; on 
Sterne's sermons, 360 ; on imita- 
tions of Spenser, 385 ; his opinion 
of blank verse, 404 ; of Ossian, 
405 ; his relation to time of Queen 
Anne, 406 ; compared with Addi- 
son, 408; his Rambler, 409-412; 
his social satire, 409 ; his dislike 
of collectors, and men of science, 
411-413; his "Irene," 413; his 
"Lives of the Poets," 413; his 
prejudices, 414; his "Life," 414, 
415. 
Journalism, the beginning of, in Eng- 
land, 152. 

Knox, Vicesimus, his testimony to 
the popularity of " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," 35 n. ; his " Essays," 401- 
403 ; his opposition to the new 
spirit, 401-403. 

La Harpe, on unity of action, 190; 
on the " Rape of the Lock," 248 n. 

Lamb, Charles, on German literature, 
428. 

Landmann, Friedrich, his exposition 
of euphuism, 19. 

Latin writers, the, their importance 
in the revival of letters, 11, 12, 
and n., 14. 

Lee, Nathanael, 90 ; quotations from 
his plays, 104, 109-111 ; his "So- 
phonisba," 133 n. 

Lessing, G. E., his campaign against 
the unities, 191, 193, 194 ; as a 
transformer of the stage, 335, 337. 

Lewes, G. H., on the influence of 
Aristotle, 166. 

Lillo, George, his " George Barn- 
well," 327-332; its importance td 
literature, 327 ; its literary inferi- 
ority, 330 ; its successors in Eng- 
land, 330 ; its influence in France, 
330 ; in Germany, 335, 336. 



Index. 



AA7 



Llovd, Robert, on Milton and Spenser, 
385. 

Love in heroic plays, 96-98. 

Lyly, John, his admiration of Can- 
terbury Cathedral, 142 n. ; his 
"Euphues," 19,306. 

♦* Mac Flecknoe," 58, 62, 63. 

" Maid's Tragedy," the, revised by 
Waller, 93-95.' 

Mairet, J. de, his " Sophonisba," 188. 

Malherbe, Fran9ois de, his influence 
on French literature, 19, 21, 424. 

Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de, his 
" Marianne," 319-321. 

Marzials,Theodore,quoted,105, and n. 

Melancholy in literature, in Eliza- 
bethan age, 247 n. ; early in eigh- 
teenth century, 247 n. 

Mendoza, Hurtado de, Diego, his 
" Lazarillo de Tormes," quoted, 
291-298, 306. 

Metaphysical poets, the, 22. 

Milton, John, an example of his prose 
style, 7 ; the causes of his unpopu- 
larity, 34-36 ; the representative 
of Puritanism, 34 ; the dependence 
of his fame on pohtics, 35, 36, and 
n., 40 ; early imitations of, by 
Lord Roscommon and Samuel Say, 
237, and n. ; his " Samson Ago- 
nistes," 89. 
-Mock-heroic, 63, 248-251. 

Montaigne, Michel de, his admira- 
tion of Gothic cathedrals, 142 n. ; 
his feeling about mountains, 147 n. 

Montemayor, Jorge de, his " Diana 
Enaraorada," 86 ; quoted, 133 n. 

Morality, renewed interest in, 129. 

More, Hannah, on German literature, 
429 n. 

Morris, William, his translation of 
the " JEneid," 70. 

Mosheim, J. L. von, his poetical at- 
tempts, 426. 

Mountain scenery, the slow growth 
of admiration of, 144-148 ; Gray's 
interest in, 391 ; Defoe's views 
concerning, 393 n. ; gradualgrowth 
of interest in, 393, 394 n. 

Musagus, exaggerated reputation of, 
at time of Renaissance, 14, and n. 



Nash, Thomas, his songs, 119 ; his 

" Jack Wilton," 306. 
News-letters, 55, 56. 
Nonconformists, 56. 
Norse themes, handled by Gray, 395 ; 

by an earlier poet, 395 n. 
Novel, English, 174-178 ; history of, 

282-322 ; in the Middle Ages, 282. 
Novelle^ the, 286, 287 ; influence of, 

on the English dramatists, 287 ; 

translations of, into EngUsh, 287 n. 

Odes, 74, 75. 

Opitz, Martin, 424. 

"Orphan," the, 114-116. 

Ossian, 417-419. 

Otway, Thomas, 95 ; his " Venice 
Preserved," 113, 114; the "Or- 
phan," 114-116 ; his ode, 116, 
117. 

"Pamela," 316-319; pronunciation 
of, 317 n. 

Pamphlets, political, driven out by 
journals, 152. 

Parliament, debates in, how reported 
in time of Queen Anne, 209. 

Pastorals, 84-86, 117; Pope's, 224, 
225 ; history of, 225-234 ; Am- 
brose Philips's, 229 ; Spenser's, 
226 ; the " Gentle Shepherd," 389. 

Pepys, Samuel, quoted, 42, 56, 72 n., 
92. 

Percy, Thomas, his " Reliques," 421, 

422 ; its influence in Germany, 

423 ; words explained in his Glos- 
sary, 322 n. 

Philips, Ambrose, his " Pastorals," 
229 ; his poems to the Pulteney 
children, 229 n. ; called " Namby- 
pamby," 229, and n. ; quarrel with 
Pope, 232-234. 

Philips, John, his " Cyder " quoted, 
138, 139, 381 ; his imitation of 
Milton, 138, 139. 

Picaresque novels, the, 287, 288 ; 
"Lazarillo de Tormes," 291-298; 
characteristic qualities of these 
novels, 299, 300; "The Rogue, 
or the Life of Guzman de Al- 
farache," 301 ; " Life of Patil the 
Sharper," 302 ; their influence in 



448 



Index. 



Germany and France, 304, 305 ; 
their inifluence on English litera- 
ture, 306-315 ; on Fielding, 351. 

Pictui'esqueness of new ideas their 
first claim to attention, 436. 

" Pilgrim's Progress," 57 n., 284 n. 

" Pleiad," the, classicism of, 17-19. 

Poetry, definition of, 205, 206. 

Pope, Alexander, his " Pastorals," 
224, 225 ; quarrel with Ambrose 
Phihps, 232-234 ; his " Essay on 
Criticism," 234-245 ; various judg- 
ments of, 243; commentators' notes 
on, 244 n. ; his " Kape of the 
Lock," 248-251 ; how judged, 248, 
and n. ; his translation of Homer, 
68, 252, 257, 258 ; publishes it by 
subscription, 252 ; his " Dunciad," 
259-268 ; his edition of Shakspeve, 
265; his "Essay on Man," 273- 
275 ; his influence, its evaporation, 
280, 281 ; his emendation of Thom- 
son's blank verse, 387. 

Prefaces, 58 n. ; 111 n. 

Prior, Matthew, 281 ; patronage ex- 
tended to, 207. 

Prose, modern English, about the 
time of Queen Anne, 4 ; earlier Eng- 
lish, specimens of, from Hobbes, 
Burton, and Milton, 4-7 ; causes 
of the awkwardness of, before 
Dryden, 8 ; comparison of Milton's 
with the present German prose 
style, 8 ; the old, injured by ped- 
antry, 8, 9. 

Prvnne, William, his " Histrio-Mas- 
tix," 80-82, 89 n. 

Puritanism, the influence of, on Eng- 
lish literature, 34, 35. 

Quevedo y Yillegas, Francisco Gomez 
de, his " Life of Paul the Sharper," 
303. 

Ramsay, Allan, his collections of old 
poems, 388 n. ; his " Gentle Shep- 
herd," 389. 

Headers, number of, in Milton's age, 
38, 39. 

Renaissance, the, a Latin rather than 
a Greek revival, 10-12, and n. ; its 
pedantic side, 240 ; at first stimu- 



lating, then narrowing, 240, 241, 
408. 

Restoration, beginning of modern 
thought, 3 ; matei'ial progress, 3 ; 
the time one of criticism, 4 ; then 
modern prose began to be written, 
4 ; comedies of, 99 ; civilization in 
England at time of, 148-150. 

Revolution of 1688, its effect on the 
position of men of letters, 136, 
137 ; the age of, 242. 

Riccoboni, Louis, on the English stage, 
195 n., 332 n. ; on Gottsched, 203 
n. ; on French stage, 334 n. 

Richardson, Samuel, on mountain 
scenery, 147 n. ; his " Pamela," 
316-319, 338 ; Voltaire's opinion 
of, 3^8 ; Diderot's, 339 ; Dr. John- 
son's, 339 ; his moral teaching, 
339, 343 ; his " Sir Charles Grandi- 
son," 340-344 ; influence of Rich- 
ardson in Germany, 344 ; on Rous- 
seau, 348, and n. ; Fielding's reac- 
tion from, 346 ; compared with 
Fielding, 346. 

Ritson, Joseph, his exactness as edi- 
tor, 421 n. 

Rochester, Earl of, 53, 118, 121. 

Roman Catholics, position of, early 
in eighteenth century, 221, 222. 

Romances, of the Middle Ages, 87, 
88, 282, 285 ; their disappearance 
before the novelle, the picaresque 
novels, and the ridicule of . Cer- 
vantes, 286, 287 ; their influence 
on society, 288-291. 

Romantic movement, summary of 
the preparations for it, 416. 

Roscommon, Lord, his " Essay on 
Translated Verse," 236, 237'; his 
early imitation of Milton, 237, 
and n. 

Rossetti, D. G., quoted, 74. 

Rousseau, J. J., on fugues, and Gothic 
art, 144 ; his " Nouvelle Heloise," 
345 ; on "Robinson Crusoe," 311. 

Royal persons, sole heroes of pseudo- 
classic tragedy, 112, 113. 

Rucellai, Bernardo, his " Rosmunda," 
185 n. ; his "Api," 383. 

Rules of the three unities, 183-204. 

Russian imitations of Spectator, 180 



Index: 



\A9 



n. ; literature, predominance of 
passion in, 178. 
Rymer, Thomas, 134 ; his criticism 
of Shakspere, 135 ; on tlie prov- 
ince of tragedy, 185 n. 

Sanazzaro, his "Arcadia," 84; "Ec- 

logae Piscatoriae," 86. 
Satires, English, 44-59 ; of Pope, 
2*76-279; his English predecessors, 
276, 277; French models, 277, 
278 ; his imitators, 279 ; modern 
view of satire, 279. 
Savage, Richard, his method of life, 
■214,216,217, 219. 

Scaliger, Julius Caesar, his opinion of 
the superiority of Vergil to Homer, 
l4; of Musseus to Homer, 15. 

Scarron, Paul, his "Roman Comique," 
305. 

Scotch adherence to informal poetry, 
887, 388, and n. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his inexactness as 
editor, 421 n. ; his translations 
from the German, 423. 

Sebilet, Thomas, his " Poetique " 
quoted, 18. 

Sedley, Sir Charles, song, 121. 

Segrais, J. R. de, quoted, 188 n. 

Seneca, influence of, on the modern 
drama of Europe, 12. 

Sentimentality, its early appearance, 
836, and n. 

Shakspere, William, his fame at the 
time of the Restoration, 4, 92, 
93 ; revisions of his plays, 95, 99- 
101, 416 n. ; renewed interest in, 
401. 

Sheffield, John, Earl of Mulgrave, his 
" Essay on Satire," 237-239. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, his " Sonnets," 23 ; 
his "Defense of Poesv," 12 n., 
289 n. ; his "Arcadia," '87, 88. 

" Simplicissimus," the, 304, 314, 
and n. 

Simpson, Edwin, on the dramatic 
unities, 186. 

Smollett, Tobias, on Gothic architect- 
ure, 144 n. ; his account of im- 
poverished authors, 217; his nov- 
els, 351. 

Songs, in plays at Restoration and 



those of older dramatists, 117- 
122. 

Sorel,Oharles,his "Histoire Comique 
de Francion," and " Le Berger 
Extravagant," 304 ; on the French 
romans coniiques, 304 n. 
Spanish influence on French stage, 
187; on Enghsh novels, 285-304. 
Spectator, the, 157, 160-162 ; quoted, 
175-177 ; influence of, on man- 
ners, 178, 179 ; success, 179, 180; 
imitations of, 180-182; papers on 
Milton, 162-171. 
Spenser, Edmund, edited by John 
Hughes in 1715, 871 ; imitated by 
later writers, 390, 416. 
Sprat, Thomas, his imitation of Cow- 
ley, 132. 
Stage, English,under Commonwealth, 

82 ; at Restoration, 82-84. 
Stanza, the, the analogue of the old 
prose sentence, 80 ; its decay be- 
fore the couplet, 30, 31. 
Steele, Sir Richard, his "Christian 
Hero" and other early writings, 
151; the Tatler, 156. 
Sterne, Lawrence, his " Tristram 
Shandy," 352-359; its sudden 
success, 352-355 ; various judg- 
ments concerning, 353, 354 ; Gold- 
smith's opinion of, 358 ; its rela- 
tion to the new sensibihty, 855 ; 
its mock facetiousness, 856 ; its 
literary merit, 356 ; his sermons, 
359, 360 ; Dr. Johnson's opinion 
of, 360 ; his " Sentimental Jour- 
ney," 861, 362. 
Stockdale,Percival,67n.,163n.,414. 
Stories, the wanderings of, 283 n. 
Subscription, publication by, 252. 
Surville, Clotilde de, pretended writ- 
ings of, 421 n. 
Swift, Jonathan, his political rela- 
tions, 210, 211, 213; his "Libel 
on the Rev. Dr. Delany and Lord 
Carteret," 258-255. 
Sylvester, Joshua, his translation of 

"Du Bartas," 20,21. 
Symonds, John Addington, his " Greek 
Poets " quoted, 14 ; his " Renais- 
sance in Italy," 12, 17, 184, 185 n., 
280, etc. 



450 



Lidex, 



Taste, literary, at Kestoration, 64. 

Tate, Nahuin, 58 ; his version of 
"King Lear," 99-101. 

Tatler, the, 156-160, 162. 

Thomson, James, his eai4y strug- 
gles, 215, 216 ; his " Soplioiiisba " 
laughed at, 323 ; his blank verse, 
386 ; helped by Pope, 387 ; his 
poems, 434-436. 

Translations, 39, 66-72. 

Trissino, Giangiorgio, his " Sofonis- 
ba," 185, 186 ; his manual of the 
poetic art, 240. 

TJnities.the three, 183-204; in French 
drama, 186-200 ; in Greek plays, 
193 ; their expulsion from French 
stage, 199, 200, and n. ; Victor 
Hugo's treatment of, 200 ; tlieir 
fate in Italy, 200 ; their brief reign 
in England, 201. 

Vauquelin de la Fresnaie, his " Art 
Poetique," 243 n., 389. 

"Venice Preserved," 113, 114. 

Voltaire, F. Arouet de, his opinion 
of Tasso and Homer, 15 ; his con- 
tempt for Gothic art, 144 ; on 
Corneille's discussion of the uni- 
ties, 190, 192, 196 ; his account of 
" Hamlet," 197 ; his intolerance 
of the new spirit, 171 n. ; on 
" Clarissa Harlowe," 338. 

Waller, Edmund, his influence on 
English poetry, 26; Dryden's praise 
of liis versification, 26 ; quotations 
from his poems, 26-28 ; liis classi- 
cal conceits, 27, 44 ; his version 



of the "Maid's Tragedy," 93- 
95. 

Walpole, Horace, his literary judg- 
ments, 220, 364 ; his contempt for 
authors, 220 ; his " Castle of 
Otranto," 362-370; his compli- 
ments to Voltaire, 364 ; Straw- 
berry Hill and love of Gothic, 365 ; 
later writers follow him, 369, 370, 

Walpole, Sir Robert, his scorn of 
men of letters, 213; their efforts 
to propitiate him, 214 ; Swift's ac- 
count of these efforts, 253-255. 

Watts, Isaac, his poems, 380, 381. 

Weekly Review^ the, 156. 

Whitman, Walt,quoted, 103. 

" Widow of Ephesus," the wander- 
ings of the story of, 283 n. 

Winchelsea, Lady, her " Nocturnal 
Reverie," 245 n. ; praised by 
Wordsworth, 246. 

Winckelmann, J. J., his admiration 
for moim tains, 147 n. 

Wordsworth, William, praises Lady 
Winchelsea's " Nocturnal Reve- 
rie," 246; his "Evening Walk," 
and " Descriptive Sketches," 438, 
439. 

Writers, government patronage of, 
in time of Queen Anne, 206-213 ; 
altered condition of, in ministry of 
Sir Robert Walpole, 216-220. 

Young, Edward, his contempt for 
Bunyan, 35 n. ; on Dr. Trapp, 201 ; 
his 'poems, 371-379 ; " Satires," 
372 ; " Odes," 373 ; his " L: st 
Dav," 374; "Night Thoughts," 
375-377. 



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